


,jJ ...i :i._ 



I 



DOWN THE COLUMBIA 




Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banfif 

MT. SIR DONALD, WHICH DRAINS FROM ALL SIDES TO THE 
COLUMBIA 



DOWN THE COLUMBIA 



BY 



LEWIS R. FREEMAN 

AUTHOR OF "IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES," 
" HELL'S HATCHES," ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 
DODD. MEAD AND COMPANY 

1921 






Copyright 1921 
By DODD, mead AND COMPANY. Inc. 




NOV -I 1921 



mt @uinn & Sotien Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



g)C!.A630l29 



TO 
C. L. CHESTER 

Hoping he will find in these pages 
some compensation for the fun 
he missed in not being along. 



INTRODUCTION 

The day on which I first conceived the idea of a 
boat trip down the Columbia hangs in a frame all its 
own in the corridors of my memory. It was a number 
of years ago — more than a dozen, I should say. Just 
previously I had contrived somehow to induce the Su- 
perintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to 
grant me permission to attempt a winter journey on 
ski around this most beautiful of America's great 
playgrounds. He had even sent a Government scout 
along to keep, or help, me out of trouble. We were a 
week out from the post at Mammoth Hot Springs. 

Putting the rainbow revel of the incomparable Can- 
yon behind, we had crossed Yellowstone Lake on the 
ice and fared onward and upward until we came at 
last to the long climb where the road under its ten 
feet of snow wound up to the crest of the Continental 
Divide. It was so dry and cold that the powdery 
snow overlying the crust rustled under our ski like 
autumn leaves. The air was diamond clear, so trans- 
parent that distant mountain peaks, juggled in the 
wizardry of the lens of the light, seemed fairly to 
float upon the eyeball. 

At the summit, where we paused for breath, an old 
Sergeant of the Game Patrol, letting down a tin can 
on a string, brought up drinks from an air-hole which 
he claimed was teetering giddily upon the very ridge- 
pole of North America. 

"If I dip to the left," he said, suiting the action to 



viii INTRODUCTION 

the word, "it's the Pacific I'll be robbing of a pint of 
Rocky Mountain dew; while if I dip to the right it's 
the Atlantic that'll have to settle back a notch. And 
if I had a string long enough, and a wing strong 
enough, to cast my can over there beyond Jackson's 
Hole," he went on, pointing southeasterly to the 
serrated peaks of the Wind River Mountains, "I 
could dip from the fount of the Green River and keep 
it from feeding the Colorado and the Gulf of Califor- 
nia by so much." 

That led me to raise the question of boating by 
river from the Great Divide to the sea, and the Scout, 
who knew something of the Madison, Jefferson and 
Gallatin to the east, and of the Salmon, Clearwater 
and Snake to the west, said he reckoned the thing 
could be done in either direction provided a man had 
lots of time and no dependent family to think of and 
shake his nerve in the pinches. 

The old Sergeant agreed heartily. River boating 
was good, he said, because it was not opposed to Na- 
ture, like climbing mountains, for instance, where you 
were bucking the law of gravity from start to finish. 
With a river it was all easy and natural. You just 
got into your boat and let it go. Sooner or later, 
without any especial effort on your part, you reached 
your objective. You might not be in a condition to 
appreciate the fact, of course, but just the same you 
got there, and with a minimum of hard work. Some 
rivers were better for boating than others for the 
reason that you got there quicker. The Snake and 
the Missouri were all very well in their way, but for 
him, he'd take the Columbia. There was a river that 



INTRODUCTION ix 

started in mountains and finished in mountains. It 
ran in mountains all the way to the sea. No slack 
water in all its course. It was going somewhere all 
the time. He had lived as a kid on the lower Columbia 
and had trapped as a man on the upper Columbia ; so 
he ought to know. There was a "he" river if there 
ever was one. If a man really wanted to travel from 
snowflake to brine and not be troubled with "on-wee" 
on the way, there was no stream that ran one-two- 
three with the Columbia as a means of doing it. 

That night, where we steamed in the black depths of 
a snow-submerged Government "Emergency" cabin, 
the Sergeant's old Columbia memories thawed with 
the hunk of frosted beef he was toasting over the 
sheet-iron stove. He told of climbing for sheep and 
goat in the high Kootenay, of trailing moose and car- 
ibou in the valleys of the Rockies, and finally of his 
years of trapping on the creeks and in the canyons that 
run down to the Big Bend of the Columbia; of how he 
used to go down to Kinbasket Lake in the Fall, port- 
aging or lining the three miles of tumbling cascades at 
Surprise Rapids, trap all winter on Sullivan Creek 
or Middle River, and then come out in the Spring to 
Revelstoke, playing ducks-and-drakes with his life 
and his scarcely less valuable catch of marten, mink 
and beaver running the riffles at Rock Slide, Twelve 
Mile and the terrible Dalles des Morts. He declared 
that there were a hundred miles of the Big Bend of the 
Columbia that had buffaloed to a fare-ye-well any 
equal stretch on any of the great rivers of North 
America for fall, rocks and wild rip-rarin* water gen- 
erally. But the dread Rapids of Death and the 



X INTRODUCTION 

treacherous swirls and eddies of Revelstoke Canyon 
were not the last of swift water by a long shot. Just 
below the defile of the Arrow Lakes the white caps 
began to rear their heads again, and from there right 
on down through the seven hundred miles and more 
to tide-water below the Cascade Locks in Oregon 
there was hardly a stretch of ten miles without its 
tumble of rapids, and mostly they averaged not more 
than three or four miles apart. 

"She's sure some 'he' river," the old chap con- 
cluded as he began to unroll his blankets, "going some- 
where all the time, tumbling over itself all the way 
trying to beat itself to the finish." 

Confusing as the Sergeant was with his "he" and 
"she" and "it" as to the gender of the mighty Oregon, 
there was no question of the fascination of the pic- 
tures conjured up by his descriptions of that so-well- 
called "Achilles of Rivers." Before I closed my eyes 
that night I had promised myself that I should take 
the first opportunity to boat the length of the Colum- 
bia, to follow its tumultuous course from its glacial 
founts to the salt sea brine, to share with it, to jostle 
it in its "tumble to get there first." 

I held by that resolve for more than a dozen years, 
although, by a strange run of chance, I was destined to 
have some experience of almost every one of the great 
rivers of the world before I launched a boat upon the 
Columbia. My appetite for swift water boating had 
grown by what it fed on. I had come more and more 
to the way of thinking of my Yellowstone companion 
who held that boating down rivers was good because 
it was not opposed to Nature, "like mountain climb- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

ing, for instance, where you bucked the law of gravity- 
all the way." In odd craft and various, and of diverse 
degree of water worthiness, I had trusted to luck and 
the law of gravity to land me somewhere to seaward 
of numerous up-river points of vantage to which I had 
attained by means of travel that ranged all the way 
from foot and donkey-back to elephant and auto. The 
Ichang gorges of the Yangtze I had run in a sampan 
manned by a yelling crew of Szechuan coolies, and the 
Salween and Irawadi below the Yunnan boundary 
in weird Burmese canoes whose crews used their legs 
as well as their arms in plying their carved paddles. 
I had floated down the Tigris from Diarbekir to 
Mosul on a kaleh of inflated sheepskins, and the Nile 
below the Nyanzas in a cranky craft of zebra hide, 
whose striped sides might have suggested the idea of 
modern marine camouflage. On the middle Niger I 
had used a condemned gunboat's life-raft, and on the 
Zambesi a dugout of saffron-tinted wood so heavy 
that it sank like iron when capsized. And it had been 
in native dugouts of various crude types that I had 
boated greater or lesser lengths of the swifter upper 
stretches of the Orinoco, Amazon and Parana. 

But through it all — whether I was floating in a 
reed-wrapped balsa on Titacaca or floundering in a 
pitch-smeared gufa on the Euj^hrates — pictures con- 
jured up by remembered phrases of the old ex-trap- 
per keep rising at the back of my brain. "The big 
eddy at the bend of Surprise Rapids, where you go 
to look for busted boats and dead bodies;" "the 
twenty-one mile of white water rolling all the way 
from Kinbasket Lake to Canoe River;" "the double 



xii INTRODUCTION 

googly intake at the head of Gordon Rapid;" "the 
black-mouthed whirlpool waiting like a wild cat at 
the foot of Dalles cles Morts" — how many times had I 
seen all these in fancy! And at last the time came 
when those pictures were to be made real — galvanized 
into life. 

It was well along toward the end of last summer 
that my friend C. L. Chester, whose work in filming 
the scenic beauties of out-of-the-way parts of the 
world has made the name Chester-Outing Pictures a 
byword on both sides of the Atlantic, mentioned that 
he was sending one of his cameramen to photograph 
the sources of the Columbia in the Selkirks and 
Rockies of western Canada. Also that he was think- 
ing of taking his own holiday in that incomparably 
beautiful region. He supposed I knew that there 
were considerable areas here that had barely been ex- 
plored, to saying nothing of photographed. This was 
notably so of the Big Bend country, where the Co- 
lumbia had torn its channel between the Rockies and 
Selkirks and found a way down to the Arrow Lakes. 
He was especially anxious to take some kind of a boat 
round the hundred and fifty miles of canyon between 
Beavermouth and Revelstoke and bring out the first 
movies of what he had been assured was the roughest 
stretch of swift water on any of the important rivers 
of the world. Was there, by any chance, a possibility 
that my plans and commitments were such that I 
would be free to join him in the event that he made the 
trip personally? 

As a matter of fact there were several things that 
should have prevented my breaking away for a trip to 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

the upper Columbia in September, not the least among 
which was a somewhat similar trip I had already 
planned for the Grand Canyon of the Colorado that 
very month. But the mention of the Big Bend was 
decisive. "I'll go," I said promptly. "When do you 
start?" 

It was finally arranged that I should go on ahead 
and engage men and boats for the Big Bend part of 
the trip, while Chester would endeavour to disentan- 
gle himself from business in Los Angeles and New 
York in time to join his cameraman and myself for a 
jaunt by packtrain to the Lake of the Hanging 
Glaciers. The latter is one of the high glacial sources 
of the Columbia in the Selkirks, and Chester, learning 
that it had never been photographed, desired especially 
to visit it in person. Returning from our visit to the 
source of the river, we planned to embark on the boat- 
ing voyage around the Big Bend. It was not until 
business finally intervened to make it impossible for 
Chester to get away for even a portion of the trip 
which he had been at such trouble to plan, that I 
decided to attempt the voyage down the Columbia as 
I had always dreamed of it — all the way from the 
eternal snows to tidewater. At Chester's suggestion, 
it was arranged that his cameraman should accom- 
pany me during such portion of the journey as the 
weather was favourable to moving picture work. 

Our preliminary work and exploration among the 
sources of the river over (this was carried on either 
on foot or by packtrain, or in runs by canoe over short 
navigable stretches of the upper river), we pushed 
off from Beavermouth, at the head of the Big Bend. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

For this most arduous part of the voyage there were 
four in the party, with a big double-ended boat spe- 
cially built for rough water. Further down, for a 
considerable stretch, we were three, in a skiff. Then, 
for a couple of hundred miles, there were four of 
us again, manning a raft and a towing launch. After 
that we were two — just the cameraman and myself, 
with the skiff. Him I finally dropped at the foot of 
Priest Rapids, fifty miles above Pasco, and the last 
two hundred and fifty miles down to Portland I rode 
alone. This "solo" run — though a one-man boat crew 
is kept rather too busy in swift water to have much 
time for enjoying the scenery — was far from proving 
the least interesting period of the journey. 

So far as I have been able to learn, my arrival in 
Portland marked the end of the first complete journey- 
that has been made from the glacial sources of the 
Columbia to tidewater. David Thompson, scientist 
and explorer for the Northwest Company, racing 
against the Astor sea expedition to be first to establish 
a post at the mouth of the Columbia, boated down a 
very large part of the navigable part of the river over 
a hundred years ago. I have found no evidence, how- 
ever, that he penetrated to the glacial fields in the 
Selkirks above Windermere and Columbia Lake from 
which spring the main feeders of the upper river. 
Thompson's, and all of the other voyages of the early 
days of which there is authentic record, started from 
Boat Encampment, where the road from the plains 
and Montreal led down to the Columbia by the icy 
waters of Portage River, or, as it is now called. Wood 
River. Thus all of the old Hudson Bay and North- 



INTRODUCTION xv 

west voyageurs ran only the lower seventy-five miles 
of the Big Bend, and avoided what is by far its worst 
water — Surprise Rapids and the twenty-one miles of 
cascades below Kinbasket Lake. Ross Cox, Alexan- 
der Ross and Franchiere, whose diaries are the best 
commentaries extant upon early Columbia history, 
had no experience of the river above Boat Encamp- 
ment. Lewis and Clark, and Hunt, with the rem- 
nants of the Astor transcontinental party, boated the 
river only below the Snake, and this was also true of 
Whitman and the other early missionaries and set- 
tlers. Fremont made only a few days' journey down 
the river from the Dalles. 

Of recent down-river passages, I have been able to 
learn of no voyageur who, having rounded the Big 
Bend, continued his trip down to the lower Columbia. 
The most notable voyage of the last three or four 
decades was that of Captain F. P. Armstrong and 
J. P. Forde, District Engineer of the Department of 
Public Works of Nelson, British Columbia, who, 
starting at the foot of the Lower Arrow Lake in a 
Peterboro canoe, made the run to Pasco, just above 
the mouth of the Snake, in ten days. As Captain 
Armstrong already knew the upper Columbia above 
the Arrow Lakes from many years of steamboating 
and prospecting, and as both he and Mr. Forde, after 
leaving their canoe at Pasco, continued on to Astoria 
by steamer, I am fully convinced that his knowledge 
of that river from source to mouth is more comprehen- 
sive than that of any one else of the present genera- 
tion. This will be, perhaps, a fitting place to ac- 
knowledge my obligation to Captain Armstrong (who 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

accompanied me in person from the mouth of the 
Kootenay to the mouth of the Spokane) for advice 
and encouragement which were very considerable fac- 
tors in the ultimate success of my venture. To Mr. 
Forde I am scarcely less indebted for his courtesy in 
putting at my disposal a copy of his invaluable report 
to the Canadian Government on the proposal to open 
the Columbia to through navigation to the Pacific 
Ocean. 

Compared to the arduous journeys of the old 
Astorian and Hudson Bay voyageurs on the Colum- 
bia, my own trip — even though a considerably greater 
length of river was covered than by any of my prede- 
cessors — was negligible as an achievement. Only in 
rounding the Big Bend in Canada does the voyageur 
of to-day encounter conditions comparable to those 
faced by those of a hundred, or even fifty years ago 
who set out to travel on any part of the Columbia. 
For a hundred miles or more of the Bend, now just as 
much as in years long gone by, an upset with the loss 
of an outfit is more likely than not to spell disaster 
and probably tragedy. But in my own passage of the 
Big Bend I can claim no personal credit that those 
miles of tumbling water were run successfully. I was 
entirely in the hands of a pair of seasoned old river 
hands, and merely pulled an oar in the boat and did 
a few other things when I was told. 

But it is on the thousand miles of swiftly flowing 
water between the lower end of the Big Bend and the 
Pacific that conditions have changed the most in fa- 
vour of the latter day voyageur. The rapids are, to be 
sure, much as they must have appeared to Thompson, 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

Ross, Franchiere and their Indian contemporaries. 
The few rocks blasted here and there on the lower 
river in an attempt to improve steamer navigation 
have not greatly simplified the problems of the man 
in a rowboat or canoe. Nor is an upset in any part of 
the Columbia an experience lightly to be courted even 
to-day. Even below the Big Bend there are a score 
of places I could name offhand where the coolest kind 
of an old river hand, once in the water, would not have 
one chance in ten of swimming out. In half a hundred 
others he might reckon on an even break of crawling 
out alive. But if luck were with him and he did reach 
the bank with the breath in his body, then his troubles 
would be pretty well behind him. Below the Cana- 
dian border there is hardly ten miles of the river with- 
out a farm, a village, or even a town of fair size. 
Food, shelter and even medical attention are not, 
therefore, ever more than a few hours away, so that 
the man who survives the loss of his boat and outfit is 
rarely in serious straits. 

But in the case of the pioneers, their troubles in like 
instance were only begun. What between hostile 
Indians and the loss of their only means of travel, the 
chances were all against their ever pulling out with 
their lives. The story of how the vicious cascade of 
the Dalles des Morts won its grisly name, which I will 
set down in its proper place, furnishes a telling in- 
stance in point. 

It is a callous traveller who, in strange lands and 
seas, does not render heart homage to the better men 
that have gone before him. Just as you cannot sail 
the Pacific for long without fancying that Cook and 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

Drake and Anson are sharing your night watches, so 
on the Columbia it is Thompson and Cox and Lewis 
and Clark who come to be your guiding spirits. At 
the head of every one of the major rapids you land 
just as you know they must have landed, and it is as 
through their eyes that you survey the work ahead. 
And when, rather against your better judgment, you 
decide to attempt to run a winding gorge where the 
sides are too steep to permit lining and where a por- 
tage would mean the loss of a day — ^you know that the 
best of the men who preceded you must have expe- 
rienced the same hollowness under the belt when they 
were forced to the same decision, for were they not 
always gambling at longer odds than you are? And 
when, elate with the thrill of satisfaction Jlnd relief 
that come from knowing that what had been a menac= 
ing roar ahead has changed to a receding growl astern, 
you are inclined to credit yourself with smartness for 
having run a rapid where Thompson lined or Ross 
Cox portaged, that feeling will not persist for long. 
Sooner or later — and usually sooner — something or 
somebody will put you right. A broken oar and all 
but a mess-up in an inconsiderable riffle was all that 
was needed to quench the glow of pride that I felt 
over having won through the roughly tumbling left- 
hand channel of Rock Island Rapids with only a short 
length of lining. And it was a steady-eyed old river 
captain who brought me back to earth the night I told 
him — somewhat boastfully, I fear — that I had slashed 
my skiff straight down the middle of the final pitch 
of Umatilla Rapids, where Lewis and Clark had felt 
they had to portage. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

"But you must not forget," he said gently, with 
just the shadow of a smile softening the line of his 
firm lips, "that Lewis and Clark had something to 
lose besides their lives — that they had irreplaceable 
records in their care, and much work still to do. It 
was their duty to take as few chances as possible. But 
they never let the risk stop them when there wasn't 
any safer way. When you are pulling through Celilo 
Canal a few days from now, and being eased down a 
hundred feet in the locks, just remember that Lewis 
and Clark put their whole outfit down the Tumwater 
and Five-lNIile Rapids of the Dalles, in either of which 
that skiff of yours would be sucked under in half a 
minute." 

Bulking insignificantly as an achievement as does 
my trip in comparison with the many Columbia voy- 
ages, recorded and unrecorded, of early days, it still 
seems to me that the opportunity I had for a compre- 
hensive survey of this grandest scenically of all the 
world's great rivers gives me warrant for attempting 
to set down something of what I saw and experienced 
during those stirring weeks that intervened between 
that breathless moment when I let the whole stream 
of the Columbia trickle down my back in a glacial ice- 
cave in the high Selkirks, and that showery end-of- 
the-afternoon when I pushed out into tidewater at 
the foot of the Cascades. 

It is scant enough justice that the most gifted of 
pens can do to Nature in endeavouring to picture in 
words the grandest of her manifestations, and my own 
quill, albeit it glides not untrippingly in writing of 
lighter things, is never so inclined to halt and sputter 



XX INTRODUCTION 

as when I try to drive it to its task of registering in 
black scrawls on white paper something of what the 
sight of a soaring mountain peak, the depth of a black 
gorge with a white stream roaring at the bottom, or 
the morning mists rising from a silently flowing river 
have registered on the sensitized sheets of my memory. 
Superlative in grandeur to the last degree as are the 
mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, cascades and 
cliffs of the Columbia, it is to my photographs rather 
than my pen that I trust to convey something of their 
real message. 

If I can, however, pass on to my readers some sug- 
gestion of the keenness of my own enjoyment of what 
I experienced on the Columbia — of the sheer joie de 
vivre that is the lot of the man who rides the running 
road ; it will have not been in vain that I have cramped 
my fingers and bent my back above a desk during 
several weeks of the best part of the California year. 
Robert Service has written something about 

"Doing things just for the doing. 

Letting babblers tell the story . . ." 

Shall I need to confess to my readers that the one 
cloud on the seaward horizon during all of my voyage 
down the Columbia was brooding there as a conse- 
quence of the presentiment that, sooner or later, I 
should have to do my own babbling? 

Pasadena, July, 1921. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

Introduction 

I Peeparing for the Big Bend 

II Up Horse Thief Creek . 

III At the Glacier .... 

IV The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers 
V Canal Flats to Bea vermouth 

VI Through Surprise Rapids 

VII KiNBASKET Lake and Rapids 

VIII Boat Encampment to Revelstoke 

IX Revelstoke to the Spokane 

X Rafting Through Hell Gate 

XI By Launch Through Box Canyon 

XII Chelan to Pasco .... 

XIII Pasco to the Dalles 

XIV The Home Stretch 



PAGE 

vi 

1 

20 

48 

63 

77 

92 

134 

160 

192 

235 

267 

286 

323 

360 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Mt. Sir Donald, which drains from all sides to the Co- 
lumbia Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Mt. Assiniboine, near the headwaters of the Columbia . 10 
Twin Falls, Takakaw Falls, two great cataracts of the 

Columbia watershed .... 

The "turning-in" scene shot in silhouette 
"Reverse" of the "going-to-bed" shot . 
On the Horse Thief Trail .... 

A dead-fall on the trail 

Looking toward the entrance of the ice cave 

Where the Hanging Glacier is about to fall . 

My shower bath in an ice cave 

Warming up after my glacial shower bath . 

Ross and Harmon. Dragon moraine in distance 

The horses in the mouth of the ice cave 

Looking across the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers 

The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers, taken from the ice 

walls, looking north .... 

The face of the Hanging Glacier . 
Where my party foregathered with Harmon's on 

of the Lake of the Hanging Glacier 

Old Hudson Bay cart at Beavermouth . 

My first push-off at the head of canoe navigati 
Columbia ...... 

Opening scene of the "Farmer" picture 

Old stern wheelers at Golden 

A quiet stretch of the Columbia near Golden 

Arrival of our boat at Beavermouth 

Our first camp at Beavermouth 

The remains of a sunken forest . 

Trapper's cabin where we found shelter for the night 



the shore 



the 



11 
38 
38 
39 
39 
52 
53 
58 
58 
59 
59 
66 

67 
72 

73 
80 

80 
81 
81 
81 
96 
96 
96 
97 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Where we landed above Surprise Rapids 
Where we tied up at "Eight mile" .... 
"Shooting" the first bit of lining at Surprise Rapids . 
The camp where the roar of the rapids deafened us . 

Where Steinhof was drowned 

Where Andy just missed drowning in Surprise Rapids 

Looking through the pines at Surprise Rapids . 

Head of second fall of Surprise Rapids 

Blackmore and the ling that refused to "register" 

The winter, with pike-pole just before lining Death Rapid 

Andy and I pulling down Kinbasket Lake . 

Our wettest camp, at Kinbasket Lake .... 

The old ferry tower above Canoe River 

Where we tied up at Kinbasket Lake .... 

The bridge which the Columbia carried a hundred miles and 

placed across another stream ..... 
Lining down to the head of Death Rapids . 
Trapper's cabin being undermined by stream 

The camp above Twelve-Mile 

Landing at sunset above Canoe River .... 
Andy and Blackmore swinging the boat into the head o 

Rock Slide Rapids 

The big rollers, from 15 to 20 feet from hollow to crest, at 

head of Death Rapids ...... 

Looking across to Boat Encampment .... 

"Wood smoke at twilight" above Twelve-Mile 

Lining down Rock Slide Rapids 

When the Columbia took half of my riding breeches . 

Bonnington Falls of the Kootenay .... 

Plastered log cabin in the Doukhobor village 

Trucking the skiff through Kettle Falls 

Twilight in the gorge at Kettle Falls .... 

Waiting for the fog to lift above Bishop's Rapids 

Ross and Armstrong registering "gloom" 

The "intake" at the Little Dalles ..... 

Where we started to line the Little Dalles , 

Map of the Upper Colurnbia 



FACING PAGE 

97 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Mc- 



A "close-up" of Ike building his raft . 

My fifty pound salmon 

Ike riding a log ...... 

Ike on the mooring line of the raft 

Raft in tow of launch near mouth of San Foil 

Ike at the sweep below Hell Gate 

The suspension bridge at Chelan Falls . 

Old River veterans on the landing at Potaris, (Capt 

Dermid on left, Ike Emerson on right) 
Night was falling as we headed into Box Canyon 
The Columbia above Box Canyon .... 
A rocky cliff near head of Lake Chelan 
Rainbow Falls, 350 feet high, above head of Lake Chelan 
Wenatchee under the dust cloud of its speeding autos 
Head of Rock Island Rapids . 
The picture that cost me a wetting 
The wreck of the "Douglas" . 
We cooked our breakfast in the galley 

"Douglas" .... 

A rocky cliff above Beverly 
Lifted drawbridge on Celilo Canal 
Tumwater Gorge of the Grand Dalles 
"Imshallah" in the lock at Five-Mile 
"Imshallah" half way through the Celilo Canal 
Palisade Rock, lower Columbia River . 
Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Highway, near Portland 
City of Portland with Mt. Hood in the distance . 
Bridge on Columbia Highway near Portland, Oregon 



FACING PAGE 

. 237 

. 237 

. 256 

. 256 

. 257 

. 257 

. 270 



of the wreck of the 



270 
271 
271 
288 
288 
289 
289 
310 
310 

311 
311 
354 
354 
355 
355 
362 
363 
370 
371 



DOWN THE COLUMBIA 



DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

CHAPTER I 

PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 

The itinerary of our Columbia trip as originally 
planned in Los Angeles called, first, for an expedi- 
tion to the source of the river, next, a voyage by boat 
around the Big Bend from Beavermouth to Revel- 
stoke, and, finally, if there was time and good weather 
held, a voyage of indefinite length on toward the sea. 
As the trip to the glaciers was largely a matter of 
engaging a good packer well in advance, while there 
was no certainty of getting any one who would under- 
take the passage of the Big Bend, it was to the latter 
that we first directed our attention. Chester wired the 
Publicity Department of the Canadian Pacific and I 
wrote friends in various parts of British Columbia. 
The C. P. R. replied that they had requested their 
Sub-Divisional Superintendent at Revelstoke to in- 
stitute inquiries for boatmen in our behalf. The only 
one of my friends who contributed anything tangible 
stated that "while the Columbia above Golden and 
below Revelstoke was admirably suited to pleasure 
boating, any attempt to run the Big Bend between 
those points would result in almost certain disaster." 

As this appeared to be about the extent of what we 



2 DOWN THE COLUI^IBIA 

were likely to learn from a distance, I decided to 
start north at once to see what could be arranged on 
the ground. Victoria yielded little save some large 
scale maps, and even these, they assured me in the 
Geographic Department of the B. C. Government 
where I secured them, were very inaccurate as to 
detail. The Big Bend region, it appeared, had never 
been surveyed north of the comparatively narrow zone 
of the C. P. R. grant. Several old hunting friends 
whom I met at the Club, although they had ranged the 
wildernesses of the Northwest from the Barren Lands 
to Alaska, spoke of the Big Bend as a veritable terra 
incognita. 

"It's said to be a great country for grizzly," one 
of them volunteered, "but too hard to get at. Only 
way to get in and out is the Columbia, and that is' 
more likely to land you in Kingdom Come than back 
in Civilization. Best forget about the Big Bend and 
go after sheep and goat and moose in the Kootenays." 

At Kamloops I was told of an Indian who had gone 
round the Big Bend the previous May, before the 
Spring rise, and come out not only with his own skin, 
but with those of seven grizzlies. I was unable to 
locate the Indian, but did find a white man who had 
made the trip with him. This chap spent half an hour 
apparently endeavouring to persuade me to give up 
the trip on account of the prohibitive risk (my expe- 
rience on other rivers, he declared, would be worse 
than useless in such water as was to be encountered at 
Surprise, Kinbasket and Death Rapids) and about 
an equal amount of time trying to convince me that 
my life would be perfectly safe if only I would en- 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 3 

gage him and his Indian and confide it to their care. 
As the consideration suggested in return for this im- 
munity figured out at between two and three times 
the rate we had been expecting to pay for boatmen, 
I had to decHne to take advantage of it. 

Finally, in Revelstoke, through the efforts of T. C. 
McNab of the Canadian Pacific, who had been at con- 
siderable trouble to line up possible candidates for a 
Big Bend trip, I met Bob Blackmore. After that 
things began moving toward a definite end. 

"You won't find old Bob Blackmore an active 
church-worker," I was told in Revelstoke, "and at 
one time he had the reputation of being the smooth- 
est thing in the way of a boot-legger in this part of 
B. C. But he drinks little himself, is a past-master of 
woodcraft, a dead shot, and has twice the experience 
of swift-water boating of any man on the upper Co- 
lumbia. In spite of the fact that he has undergone 
no end of hardship in his thirty years of packing, 
hunting, prospecting, trapping and boating all over 
the West, he's as hard to-day at fifty odd as most men 
are at thirty. Because he dished a boatload of freight 
last year somewhere up river, there are a few who are 
saying that old Bob Blackmore is losing his grip. 
Don't believe it. He was never better in his life than 
he is right now, and if you can persuade him to run 
your show round the Big Bend you're in luck. Once 
you start, you'll come right on round to Revelstoke all 
right. No fear on that score. But if you have old 
Bob Blackmore you'll stand a jolly lot better chance 
of arriving on top of the water." 

I found Bob Blackmore at his river-side home in the 



4 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

old town — ^what had been the metropoHtan centre of 
Revelstoke in the days when it was the head of naviga- 
tion of steamers from below the Arrow Lakes, and 
before the railway had come to drag settlement a 
mile northeastward and away from the Columbia. 
He was picking apples with one hand and slapping 
mosquitoes with the other — a grey-haired, grey-eyed 
man of middle height, with a muscular torso, a steady 
stare, and a grip that I had to meet half way to save 
my fingers. He might have passed for a well-to-do 
Middle Western farmer except for his iron-grey 
moustaches, which were long and drooping, like those 
affected by cowboy-town sheriffs in the movies. 

I knew at once that this was the man I wanted, and 
my only doubt was as to whether or not he felt the 
same way about me. They had told me in town that 
Blackmore, having some means and being more or less 
independent, never went out with a man or an outfit 
he did not like. I felt that it was I who was on ap- 
proval, not he. I need not have worried, however. In 
this instance, at least. Bob Blackmore's mind was 
made up in advance. It was the movies that had 
done it. 

"The C. P. R. people vjrrote me that you might be 
wanting me for the Bend," he said genially after I 
had introduced myself, "and on the chance that we 
would be hitching up I have put my big boat in the 
water to give her a good soaking. I've figured that 
she's the only boat on the upper river that will do for 
what you want. I reckon I know them all. She'll 
carry three or four times as much as the biggest Peter- 
boro. Besides, if you tried to go round in canoes, 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 5 

you'd be portaging or lining in a dozen places where 
I would drive this one straight through. With any 
luck, and if the water doesn't go down too fast, I'd 
figure on going the whole way without taking her out 
of the river at more'n one place, and maybe not there." 

"So you're willing to go ahead and see us through," 
I exclaimed delightedly. "They told me in the town 
that you'd probably need a lot of persuading, espe- 
cially as you've been saying for the last two or three 
years that you were through with the Bend for good 
and all." 

Blackmore grinned broadly and somewhat sheep- 
ishly. "So I have," he said. "Fact is, I've never yet 
been round the Bend that I didn't tell myself and 
everybody else that I'd never try it again. I really 
meant it the last time, which was three or four years 
ago. And I've really meant it every time I said it 
right up to a few days back, when I heard that you 
wanted to take a movie machine in there and try and 
get some pictures. If that was so, I said to myself, 
it was sure up to me to do what I could to help, for 
there's scenery in there that is more worth picturing 
than any I've come across in thirty years of knocking 
around all over the mountain country of the West. 
So I'm your man if you want me. Of course you 
know something of what you're going up against in 
bucking the Bend?" 

"Yes," I replied a bit wearily. "I've been hearing 
very little else for the last week. Let's talk about the 
scenery." 

"So they've been trying to frighten you out of it," 
he said with a sympathetic smile. "They always do 



6 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

that with strangers who come here to tackle the Bend. 
And mostly they succeed. There was one chap they 
couldn't stop, though. He was a professor of some 
kind from Philadelphia. Fact is, he wasn't enough 
frightened. That's a bad thing with the Columbia, 
which isn't to be taken liberties with. I buried him 
near the head of Kinbasket Lake. We'll see his grave 
when we come down from Surprise Rapids. I'll want 
to stop off for a bit and see if the cross I put up is still 
standing. He was . . ." 

''Et tu Brute/' I muttered under my breath. Then, 
aloud: "Let's look at the boat." 

Already this penchant of the natives for turning the 
pages of the Big Bend's gruesome record of death and 
disaster was getting onto my nerves, and it was rather 
a shock to find even the quiet-spoken, steady-eyed 
Blackmore addicted to the habit. Afterwards, when 
I got used to it, I ceased to mind. As a matter of 
fact, the good souls could no more help expatiating 
on what the Big Bend had done to people who had 
taken liberties with it than an aviator who is about to 
take you for a flight can help leading you round back 
of the hangar and showing you the wreckage of his 
latest crash. It seems to be one of the inevitable 
promptings of the human animal to warn his brother 
animal of troubles ahead. This is doubtless the out- 
growth of the bogies and the "don'ts" which are cal- 
culated to check the child's explorative and investiga- 
tive instincts in his nursery days. From the source to 
the mouth of the Columbia it was never (according to 
the solicitous volunteer advisers along the way) the 
really dangerous rapids that I had put behind me. 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 7 

These were always somewhere ahead — usually just 
around the next bend, where I would run into them 
the first thmg in the morning. Luckily, I learned to 
discount these warnings very early in the game, and 
so saved much sleep which it would have been a real 
loss to be deprived of. 

Blackmore led the way back through his apple 
orchard and down a stairway that descended the 
steeply-sloping river bank to his boat-house. The 
Columbia, a quarter of a mile wide and with just a 
shade of grey clouding its lucent greenness to reveal 
its glacial origin, slid swiftly but smoothly by with a 
purposeful current of six or seven miles an hour. A 
wing-dam of concrete, evidently built to protect the 
works of a sawmill a bit farther down stream, jutted 
out into the current just above, and the boat-house, set 
on a raft of huge logs, floated in the eddy below. 

There were two boats in sight, both in the water. 
Blackmore indicated the larger one of the pair — a 
double-ender of about thirty feet in length and gen- 
erous beam — as the craft recommended for the Big 
Bend trip. "I built her for the Bend more than fif- 
teen years ago," he said, tapping the heavy gunwale 
with the toe of his boot. "She's the only boat I know 
that has been all the way round more than once, so 
you might say she knows the road. She's had many a 
hard bump, but — with any luck — she ought to stand 
one or two more. Not that I'm asking for any more 
than can be helped, though. There's no boat ever 
built that will stand a head-on crash 'gainst a rock in 
any such current as is driving it down Surprise or 
Kinbasket or Death Rapids, or a dozen other runs of 



8 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

swift water on the Bend. Of course, you're going to 
hit once in a while, spite of all you can do; but, if 
you're lucky, you'll probably kiss off without stav- 
ing in a side. If you're not — well, if you're not 
lucky, you have no business fooling with the Bend 
at all. 

"Now what I like about this big boat of mine," he 
continued, taking up the scope of the painter to bring 
her in out of the tug of the current, "is that she's a 
lucky boat. Never lost a man out of her — that is, 
directly — and only one load of freight. Now with 
that one (indicating the smaller craft, a canoe-like 
double-ender of about twenty feet) it's just the other 
way. If there's trouble around she'll have her nose 
into it. She's as good a built boat as any on the river, 
easy to handle up stream and down — but unlucky. 
Why, only a few weeks ago a lad from the town bor- 
rowed her to have a bit of a lark running the ripple 
over that dam there. It's covered at high water, and 
just enough of a pitch to give the youngsters a little 
excitement in dropping over. Safe enough stunt with 
any luck at all. But that boat's not lucky. She 
dj'ifted on sidewise, caught her keel and capsized. The 
lad and the two girls with him were all drowned. They 
found his body a week or two later. All his pockets 
were turned wrong-side-out and empty. The Colum- 
bia current most always plays that trick on a man — 
picks his pockets clean. The bodies of the girls never 
did show up. Probably the sand got into their clothes 
and held them down. That's another little trick of 
the Columbia. She's as full of tricks as a box of 
monkeys, that old stream there, and you've got to 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 9 

keep an eye lifting for 'em all the time if you're going 
to steer clear of trouble." 

"It won't be the first time I've had my pockets 
picked," I broke in somewhat testily. "Besides, if 
you're going to charge me at the rate that Indian I 
heard of in Kamloops demanded, there won't be any- 
thing left for the Columbia to extract." 

That brought us down to business, and I had no 
complaint to make of the terms Blackmore suggested 
— twelve dollars a day for himself and boat, I to buy 
the provisions and make my own arrangements with 
any additional boatmen. I already had sensed 
enough of the character of the work ahead to know 
that a good boatman would be cheap at any price, and 
a poor one dear if working only for his grub. Black- 
more was to get the big boat in shape and have it 
ready to ship by rail to Bea vermouth (at the head of 
the Bend and the most convenient point to get a craft 
into the river) when I returned from the source of the 
Columbia above Windermere. 

Going on to Golden by train from Revelstoke, I 
looked up Captain F. P. Armstrong, with whom I had 
already been in communication by wire. The Captain 
had navigated steamers between Golden and Winder- 
mere for many years, they told me at C. P. R. head* 
quarters in Revelstoke, and had also some experience 
of the Bend. He would be unable to join me for the 
trip himself, but had spoken to one or two men who 
might be induced to do so. In any event his advice 
would be invaluable. 

I shall have so much to say of Captain Armstrong 
in the account of a later part of my down-river voy- 



10 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

age that the briefest introduction to a man who has 
been one of the most picturesque personalities in the 
pioneering history of British Columbia will suffice 
here. Short, compactly but cleanly built, with iron- 
grey hair, square, determined jaw and piercing black 
eyes, he has been well characterized as "the biggest 
little man on the upper Columbia." Although he 
confessed to sixty-three years, he might well have 
passed for fifty, a circumstance which doubtless had 
much to do with the fact that he saw three years of 
active service in the transport service on the Tigris 
and Nile during the late war. Indeed, as became ap- 
parent later, he generally had as much reserve energy 
at the end of a long day's paddling as another man 
I could mention who is rather loath to admit 
forty. 

Captain Armstrong explained that he was about to 
close the sale of one of his mines on a tributary of the 
upper Columbia, and for that reason would be unable 
to join us for the Big Bend trip, as much as he would 
have enjoyed doing so. In the event that I decided 
to continue on down the Columbia after circling the 
Bend, it was just possible he would be clear to go 
along for a way. He spoke highly of Blackmore's 
ability as a river man, and mentioned one or two others 
in Golden whom he thought might be secured. Ten 
dollars a day was the customary pay for a boatman 
going all the way round the Bend. That was about 
twice the ordinary wage prevailing at the time in the 
sawmills and lumber camps. The extra five was 
partly insurance, and partly because the work was 
hard and really good river men very scarce. It was 



•\-^ 

-»>~ 



-f .*- *> 




Courtes}- of Byron Harmon, Ilanff 
MT. ASSINIBOINE, NEAR THE HEADWATERS OF THE COLUMBIA 




■-^^^ 




PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 11 

fair pay for an experienced hand. A poor boatman 
was worse than none at all, that is, in a pinch, while a 
good one might easily mean the difference between 
success and disaster. And of course I knew that dis- 
aster on the Bend — with perhaps fifty miles of track- 
less mountains between a wet man on the bank and 
the nearest human habitation — was spelt with a 
big D. 

So far as I can remember, Captaui Armstrong was 
the only one with whom I talked in Golden who did 
not try to dramatize the dangers and difficulties of the 
Big Bend. Seemingly taking it for granted that I 
knew all about them, or in any case would hear enough 
of them from the others, he turned his attention to 
forwarding practical plans for the trip. He even 
contributed a touch of romance to a venture that the 
rest seemed a unit in trying to make me believe was a 
sort of a cross between going over Niagara in barrel 
and a flight to one of the Poles. 

"There was a deal of boot-legging on the river be- 
tween Golden and Boat Encampment during the 
years the Grand Trunk was being built," he said as 
we pored over an outspread map of the Big Bend, 
"for that was the first leg of the run into the western 
construction camps, where the sale of liquor was for- 
bidden by law. Many and many a boatload of the 
stuff went wrong in the rapids. This would have been 
inevitable in any case, just in the ordinary course of 
working in such difficult water. But what made the 
losses worse was the fact that a good many of the boot- 
leggers always started off with a load under their belts 
as well as in their boats. Few of the bodies were ever 



12 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

found, but with the casks of whisky it was different, 
doubtless because the latter would float longer and 
resist buffeting better. Cask after cask has kept 
turning up through the years, even down to the pres- 
ent, when B. C. is a comparative desert. They are 
found in the most unexpected places, and it's very 
rare for a party to go all the way round the Bend 
without stumbling onto one. So bear well in mind you 
are not to go by anything that looks like a small bar- 
rel without looking to see if it has a head in both ends. 
If you have time, it will pay you to« clamber for a few 
hours over the great patch of drift just below Middle 
River on Kinbasket Lake. That's the one great catch- 
all for everything floatable that gets into the river 
below Golden. I've found just about everything there 
from a canary bird cage to a railway bridge. Failing 
there (which will only be because you don't search 
long enough), dig sixteen paces northwest by com- 
pass from the foundation of the west tower of the 
abandoned cable ferry just above Boat Encamp- 
ment." 

"How's that again!" I exclaimed incredulously. 
"Sure you aren't confusing the Big Bend with the 
Spanish Main?" 

"If you follow my directions," replied the Captain 
with a grin, "you'll uncover more treasure for five 
minutes' scratching than you'd be likely to find in 
turning over the Dry Tortugas for five years. You 
see, it was this way," he went on, smiling the smile of 
a man who speaks of something which has strongly 
stirred his imagination. "It was only a few weeks 
after Walter Steinhoff was lost in Surprise Rapids 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 13 

that I made the trip round the Bend in a Peterboro to 
examine some silver-lead jjrospects I had word of. I 
had with me Pete Bergenham (a first-class river man; 
one you will do well to get yourself if you can) and 
another chap. This fellow was good enough with the 
paddle, but — though I didn't know it when I engaged 
him — badly addicted to drink. That's a fatal weak- 
ness for a man who is going to work in swift water, 
and especially such water as you strike at Surprise 
and the long run of Kinbasket Rapids. The wreck- 
age of Steinlioff's disaster (Blackmore will spin you 
the straightest yarn about that) was scattered all the 
way from the big whirlpool in Surprise Rapids down 
to JVIiddle River, where they finally found his body. 
We might easily have picked up more than the one 
ten-gallon cask we bumped into, floating just sub- 
merged, in the shallows of the mud island at the head 
of Kinbasket Lake. 

"I didn't feel quite right about having so much 
whisky along; but the stuff had its value even in those 
days, and I would have felt still worse about leaving 
it to fall into the hands of some one who would be 
less moderate in its use than would I. I knew Pete 
Bergenham was all right, and counted on being able 
to keep an eye on the other man. That was just 
where I fell down. I should have taken the cask to 
bed with me instead of leaving it in the canoe. 

"When the fellow got to the whisky I never knew, 
but it was probably well along toward morning. He 
was already up when I awoke, and displayed un- 
wonted energy in getting breakfast and breaking 
camp. If I had known how heavily he had been tip- 



14 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

pling I would have given him another drink before 
pushing off to steady his nerve. That might have held 
him all right. As it was, reaction in mind and body- 
set in just as we headed into that first sharp dip be- 
low the lake — the beginning of the twenty-one miles 
of Kinbasket Rapids. At the place where the bot- 
tom has dropped out from under and left the chan- 
nel blocked by jagged rocks with no place to run 
through, he collapsed as if kicked in the stomach, and 
slithered down into the bottom of the canoe, blubber- 
ing like a baby. We just did manage to make our 
landing above the cascade. With a less skilful man 
than Bergenham at the stern paddle we would have 
failed, and that would have meant that we should 
probably not have stopped for good before we settled 
into the mud at the bottom of the Arrow Lakes. 

"Even after that I could not find it in my heart to 
dish for good and all so much prime whisky. So I 
compromised by burying it that night, after we had 
come through the rapids without further mishap, at 
the spot I have told you of. That it was the best thing 
to do under the circumstances I am quite convinced. 
The mere thought that it was still in the world has 
cheered me in many a thirsty interval — yes, even 
out on the Tigris and the Nile, when there was no cer- 
tainty I would ever come back to get it again. 

"And now I'm going to tell you how to find it, for 
there's no knowing if I shall ever have a chance to go 
for it myself. If you bring it out to Revelstoke safely, 
we'll split it fifty-fifty, as they say on your side of the 
line. All I shall want to know is who your other boat- 
men are going to be. Blackmore is all right, but if 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 15 

any one of the men whom he takes with him is a real 
drinker, you'd best forget the whole thing. If it's an 
'all-sober' crew, I'll give you a map, marked so plainly 
that you can't go wrong. It will be a grand haul, for 
it was Number One Scotch even when we planted it 
there, and since then it has been ageing in wood for 
something like ten years. I suppose you'll be keen to 
smuggle your dividend right on down into the 'The 
Great American Desert'?" he concluded with a grin. 

"Trust me for that," I replied with a knowing shake 
of my head. "I didn't spend six months writing up 
opium smuggling on the China Coast for nothing." 
Then I told him the story of the Eurasian lady who 
was fat in Amoy and thin in Hongkong, and who 
finally confessed to having smuggled forty pounds of 
opium, three times a week for five years, in oiled silk 
hip- and bust-pads. 

"You must have a lot of prime ideas," said the 
Captain admiringly. "You ought to make it easy, 
especially if you cross the line by boat. How would a 
false bottom . . . but perhaps it would be safer to 
float it down submerged, with an old shingle-bolt for 
a buoy, and pick it up afterwards." 

"Or inside my pneumatic mattress," I suggested. 
"But perhaps it would taste from the rubber." By 
midnight we had evolved a plan which could not fail, 
and which was almost without risk. "The stuff's as 
good as in California," I told myself before I went to 
sleep — "and enough to pay all the expenses of my trip 
in case I should care to boot-leg it, which I won't." 

Captain Armstrong's mention of the Steinhoff dis- 
aster was not the first I had heard of it. The chap 



16 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

with whom I had talked in Kamloops had shown me a 
photograph of a rude cross that he and his Indian 
companion had erected over Steinhoff's grave, and in 
Revelstoke nearly every one who spoke of the Bend 
made some reference to the tragic affair. But here in 
Golden, which had been his home, the spectacularity of 
his passing seemed to have had an even more profound 
effect. As with everything else connected with the 
Big Bend, however, there was a very evident tend- 
ency to dramatize, to "play up," the incident. I 
heard many different versions of tlie story, but there 
was one part, the tragic finale, in which they all were 
in practical agreement. When his canoe broke loose 
from its line, they said, and shot down toward the big 
whirlpool at the foot of the second cataract of Sur- 
prise Rapids, Steinhoff, realizing that there was no 
chance of the light craft surviving the maelstrom, 
coolly turned round, waved farewell to his companions 
on the bank, and, folding his arms, went down to his 
death. Canoe and man were sucked completely out 
of sight, never to be seen again until the fragments 
of the one and the battered body of the other were 
cast up, weeks later, many miles below. 

It was an extremely effective story, especially as 
told by the local member in the B. C. Provincial As- 
sembly, who had real histrionic talent. But somehow 
I couldn't quite reconcile the Nirvanic resignation 
implied by the farewell wave and the folded arms ^^ath 
the never-say-die, cat-with-nine-lives spirit I had 
come to associate with your true swift-water boatman 
the world over. I was quite ready to grant that the 
big sockdolager of a whirlpool below the second pitch 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 17 

of Surprise Rapids was a real all-day and all-night 
sucker, but the old river hand who gave up to it like 
the Kentucky coons at the sight of Davy Crockett's 
squirrel-gun wasn't quite convincing. That, and the 
iterated statement that Steinhoff' s canoe-mate, who 
was thrown into the water at the same time, won his 
way to the bank by walking along the bottom beneath 
the surface, had a decidedly steadying effect on the 
erratic flights to which my fancy had been launched 
by Big Bend yarns generally. There had been some- 
thing strangely familiar in them all, and finally it 
came to me — Chinese feng-sliui generally, and par- 
ticularly the legends of the sampan men of the portage 
villages along the Ichang gorges of the Yangtze. 
The things the giant dragon lurking in the whirlpools 
at the foot of the rapids would do to the luckless ones 
he got his back-curving teeth into were just a slightly 
different way of telling what the good folk of Golden 
claimed the Big Bend would do to the hapless wights 
who ventured down its darksome depths. 

Now that I thought of it in this clarifying light, 
there had been "dragon stuff" bobbing up about al- 
most every stretch of rough water I had boated. 
Mostly it was native superstition, but partly it was 
small town pride — pride in the things their "Dragon" 
had done, and would do. Human nature — yes, and 
river rapids, too — are very much the same the world 
over, whether on the Yangtze, Brahmaputra or upper 
Columbia. 

That brought the Big Bend into its proper per- 
spective. I realized that it was only water running 
down hill after all. Possibly it was faster than any- 



18 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

thing I had boated previously, and certainly — except- 
ing the Yukon perhaps — colder. A great many men 
had been drowned in trying to run it ; but so had men 
been drowned in duck-ponds. But many men had 
gone round without disaster, and that would I do, 
Imshallah. I always liked that pious Arab qualifi- 
cation when speaking of futurities. Later I applied 
the name — in fancy — to the skiff in which I made the 
voyage down the lower river. 

Yes, undoubtedly the most of the yarns and the 
warnings were "dragon stuff" pure and simple, but 
Romance remained. A hundred miles of river with 
possible treasure lurking in every eddy, and one place 
where it had to be! I felt as I did the first time I 
read "Treasure Island," only more so. For that I 
had only read, and now I was going to search for my- 
self — yes, and I was going to find, too. It was a gol- 
den sunset in more ways than one the evening before 
I was to leave for the upper river. Barred and 
spangled and fluted with liquid, lucent gold was the 
sky above hills that were themselves golden with the 
tints of early autumn. And in the Northwest there 
was a flush of rose, old rose that deepened and glowed 
in lambent crimson where a notch between the S el- 
kirks and Rockies marked the approximate location 
of historic Boat Encampment. "Great things have 
happened at Boat Encampment," I told myself, "and 
its history is not all written." Then: "Sixteen paces 
northwest by compass from the foundation of the 
west tower of the abandoned cable ferry . . ." Sev- 
eral times during dinner that evening I had to check 
myself from humming an ancient song. "What's that 



PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND 19 

about, 'Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum'?" queried the 
mackinaw drummer from Winnipeg who sat next me. 
"I thought you were from the States. I don't quite 
see the point." 

"It's just as well you don't," I replied, and was 
content to let it go at that. 



CHAPTER II 

UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 

When I started north from Los Angeles toward 
the end of August Chester, held up for the moment by- 
business, was hoping to be able to shake free so as to 
arrive on the upper Columbia by the time I had ar- 
rangements for the Big Bend voydge complete. We 
would then go together to the Lake of the Hangmg 
Glaciers before embarking on the Bend venture. 
Luck was not with him, however. The day I was 
ready to start on up river from Golden I received a 
wire stating that he was still indefinitely delayed, and 
that the best that there was now any chance of his 
doing would be to join me for the Bend. He had 
ordered his cameraman to Windermere, where full 
directions for the trip to the glaciers awaited him. He 
hoped I would see fit to go along and help with the 
picture, as some "central figure" besides the guides 
and packers would be needed to give the "story" con- 
tinuity. I replied that I would be glad to do the best 
I could, and left for Lake Windermere by the next 
train. Few movie stars have ever been called to 
twinkle upon shorter notice. 

One is usually told that the source of the Columbia 
is in Canal Flats, a hundred and fifty miles above Gol- 
den, and immediately south of a wonderfully lovely 
mountain-begirt lake that bears the same name as the 
river. This is true in a sense, although, strictly speak- 

20 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 21 

ing, the real source of the river — the one rising at the 
point the greatest distance from its mouth — would be 
the longest of the many mountain creeks which con- 
verge upon Colmnbia Lake from the encompassing 
amphitheatre of the Rockies and Selkirks. This is 
probably Dutch Creek, which rises in the perpetual 
snow of the Selkirks and sends down a roaring tor- 
rent of grey-green glacier water into the western side 
of Columbia Lake. Scarcely less distant from the 
mouth of the Columbia are the heads of Toby and 
Horse Thief creeks, both of which bring splendid 
volumes of water to the mother river just below Lake 
Windermere. 

It was the presence of the almost totally unknown 
Lake of the Hanging Glaciers near the head of the 
Horse Thief Creek watershed that was responsible 
for Chester's determination to carry his preliminary 
explorations up to the latter source of the Columbia 
rather than to one slightly more remote above the 
upper lake. We had assurance that a trail, upon 
which work had been in progress all summer, would 
be completed by the middle of September, so that it 
would then be possible for the first time to take pack- 
horses and a full moving-picture outfit to one of the 
rarest scenic gems on the North American continent, 
the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. To get the first 
movies of what is claimed to be the only lake in the 
world outside of the polar regions that has icebergs 
perpetually floating upon its surface was the principal 
object of Chester in directing his outfit up Horse 
Thief Creek. My own object was to reach one of the 
several points where the Columbia took its rise in the 



22 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

glacial ice, there to do a right-about and start upon my 
long-dreamed-of journey from snow-flake to brine. 

It is a dozen years or more since one could travel 
the hundred miles of the Columbia between Golden 
and Lake Windermere by steamer. The compara- 
tively sparse population in this rich but thinly settled 
region was not sufficient to support both rail and 
river transport, and with the coming of the former 
the latter could not long be maintained. Two or 
three rotting hulks on the mud by the old landing at 
Golden are all that remain of onfe of the most pic- 
turesque steamer services ever run, for those old 
stern-wheelers used to flounder up the Columbia to 
Windermere, on through Mud and Columbia I^akes 
to Canal Flats, through a log-built lock to the Koote- 
nay watershed, and then down the winding canyons 
and tumbling rapids of that tempestuous stream to 
Jennings, Montana. Those were the bonanza days 
of the upper Columbia and Kootenay — such days as 
they have never seen since nor will ever see again. 
I was to hear much of them later from Captain Arm- 
strong when we voyaged a stretch of the lower river 
together. 

There is a train between Golden and Windermere 
only three times a week. It is an amiable, ambling 
"jerk-water," whose conductor does everything from 
dandling babies to unloading lumber. At one station 
he held over for five minutes to let me run down to a 
point where I could get the best light on a "reflec- 
tion" picture in the river, and at another he ran the 
whole train back to pick up a basket of eggs which 
had been overlooked in the rush of departure. The 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 23 

Canadian Pacific has the happy facultj^ of being all 
things to all men. Its main line has always impressed 
me as being the best-run road I have ever travelled on 
in any part of the world, including the United States. 
One would hardly characterize its little country feed- 
ers in the same words, but even these latter, as the 
instances I have noted will bear out, come about as 
near to being run for the accommodation of the travel- 
ling public as anything one will ever find. There is 
not the least need of hurrying this Golden-Winder- 
mere express. It stops over night at Invermere any- 
way, before continuing its leisurely progress south- 
ward the next morning. 

Chester's cameraman met me with a car at the sta- 
tion, and we rode a mile to the hotel at Invermere, on 
the heights above the lake. His name was Roos, he 
said — Len H. Roos of N. Y. C. It was his misfor- 
tune to have been born in Canada, he explained, but 
he had always had a great admiration for Americans, 
and had taken out his first papers for citizenship. He 
could manage to get on with Canadians in a pinch, 
he averred further; but as for Britishers — no "Lime- 
juicers" for him, with their "G'bly'me's" and after- 
noon teas. I saw that this was going to be a difficult 
companion, and took the occasion to point out that, 
since he was going to be in Canada for some weeks, it 
might be just as well to bottle up his rancour against 
the land of his birth until he was back on the other 
side of the line and had completed the honour he in- 
tended to do Uncle Sam by becoming an American 
citizen. INIaybe I was right, he admitted thought- 
fully ; but it would be a hard thing for him to do, as he 



24 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was naturally very frank and outspoken and a great 
believer in saj^ing just what he thought of people and 
things. 

He was right about being outspoken. He had 
also rather a glittering line of dogma on the finer 
things of life. Jazz was the highest form of music 
(he ought to know, for had he not played both jazz 
and grand opera when he was head drummer of the 
Gait, Ontario, town band?) ; the Mack Sennett bath- 
ing comedy was his belle, ideal of kinematic art; and 
the newspapers of William Hearst were the supreme 
development of journalism. This latter he knew, be- 
cause he had done camera work for a Hearst syndi- 
cate himself. I could manage to make a few degrees 
of allowance for jazz and the Mack Sennett knocka- 
bouts under the circmnstances, but the deification of 
Hearst created an unbridgeable gulf. I foresaw that 
"director" and "star" were going to have bumpy 
sledding, but also perceived the possibility of comedy 
elements which promised to go a long way toward re- 
deeming the enforced partnership from irksomeness, 
that is, if the latter were not too prolonged. That it 
could run to six or seven weeks and the passage of 
near to a thousand miles of the Columbia without 
turning both "director" and "star" into actual assas- 
sins, I would never have believed. Indeed, I am 
not able to figure out even now how it could have 
worked out that way. I can't explain it. I merely 
state the fact. 

Walter Nixon, the packer who was to take us "up 
Horse Thief," had been engaged by wire a week pre- 
viously. His outfit had been ready for several days, 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 25 

and he called at the hotel the evening of my arrival 
to go over the grub list and make definite plans. As 
there were only two of us, he reckoned that ten horses 
and two packers would be sufficient to see us through. 
The horses would cost us two dollars a day a head, and 
the packers five dollars apiece. The provisions he 
would buy himself and endeavour to board us at a 
dollar and a half apiece a man. This footed up to 
between thirtj^-five and forty dollars a day for the 
outfit, exclusive of the movie end. It seemed a bit 
stiff offhand, but was really very reasonable consider- 
ing present costs of doing that kind of a thing and the 
thoroughly first-class service Nixon gave us from be- 
ginning to end. 

Nixon himself I was extremely well impressed with. 
He was a fine up-standing fellow of six feet or more, 
black-haired, black-eyed, broad-shouldered and a 
swell of biceps and thigh that even his loose-fitting 
mackinaws could not entirely conceal. I liked partic- 
ularly his simple rig-out, in its pleasing contrast 
to the cross-between-a-movie-cowboy-and-a-Tyrolean- 
yodeler garb that has come to be so much affected 
by the so-called guides at Banff and Lake Louise. 
Like the best of his kind, Nixon was quiet-spoken and 
leisurely of movement, but with a suggestion of 
powerful reserves of both vocabulary and activity. I 
felt sure at first sight that he was the sort of a man 
who could be depended upon to see a thing through 
whatever the difficulties, and I never had reason to 
change my opinion on that score. 

It was arranged that night that Nixon should get 
away with the pack outfit by noon of the next day, and 



26 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

make an easy stage of it to the Starbird Ranch, at the 
end of the wagon-road, nineteen miles out from Inver- 
mere. The following morning Roos and I would 
come out by motor and be ready to start by the time 
the horses were up and the packs on. That gave us 
an extra day for exploring Windermere and the more 
imminent sources of the Columbia. 

Roos' instructions from Chester called for a 
"Windermere Picture," in which should be shown the 
scenic, camping, fishing and hunting life of that re- 
gion. The scenic and camping shots he had already 
made; the fish and the game had eluded him. I ar- 
rived just in time to take part in the final scurry to 
complete the picture. The fish to be shown were 
trout, and the game mountain sheep and goat, or at 
least that was the way Roos planned it at breakfast 
time. When inquiry revealed that it would take a day 
to reach a trout stream, and three days to penetrate to 
the haunts of the sheep and goats, he modified the 
campaign somewhat to conform with the limited time 
at our disposal. Close at hand in the lake there was 
a fish called the squaw-fish, which, floundering at the 
end of a line, would photograph almost like a trout, or 
so the hotel proprietor thought. And the best of it 
was that any one could catch them. Indeed, at times 
one had to manoeuvre to keep them from taking the 
bait that was meant for the more gamy and edible, 
but also far more elusive, ling or fresh-water cod. 
As for the game picture, said Roos, he would save 
time by having a deer rounded up and driven into the 
lake, where he would pursue it with a motor boat and 
shoot the required hunting pictures. He would like 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 27 

to have me dress like a tourist and do the hunting and 
fishing. That would break me in to adopting an easy 
and pleasing manner before the camera, so that a 
minimum of film would be spoiled when he got down 
to our regular work on the Hanging Glacier picture. 
It wouldn't take long. That was the advantage of 
"news" training for a cameraman. You could do 
things in a rush when you had to. 

Mr. Clelland, secretary of the Windermere Com- 
pany, courteously found us tackle and drove us down 
to the outlet of the lake to catch the squaw-fish. 
Three hours later he drove us back to the hotel for 
lunch without one single fragment of our succulent 
salt-pork bait having been nuzzled on its hook. I 
lost my "easy and pleasing manner" at the end of the 
first hour, and Roos — who was under rather greater 
tension in standing by to crank — somewhat sooner. 
He said many unkind things about fish in general and 
squaw-fish in particular before we gave up the fight 
at noon, and I didn't improve matters at all by sug- 
gesting that I cut out the picture on a salmon can 
label, fasten it to my hook, and have him shoot me 
catching that. There was no sense whatever in the 
idea, he said. You had to have studio lighting to get 
away with that sort of thing. He couldn't see how I 
could advance such a thing seriously. As I had some 
doubts on that score myself, I didn't start an argu- 
ment. 

In the afternoon no better success attended our 
effort to make the hunting picture, — this because no 
one seemed to know where a deer could be rounded up 
and driven into the lake. Again I discovered a way 



28 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

to save this situation. On the veranda of the country 
club there was a fine mounted specimen of Ovis Cana- 
densis, the Canadian mountain sheep. By proper 
ballasting, I pointed out to Boos, this fine animal 
could be made to submerge to a natural swimming 
depth — say with the head and shoulders just above 
the water. Then a little Evinrude engine could be 
clamped to its hind quarters and set going. Forth- 
with the whole thing must start off ploughing across 
the lake just like a live mountain sheep. By a little 
manoeuvring it ought to be possible to shoot at an 
angle that would interpose the body of the sheep be- 
tween the eye and the pushing engine. If this proved 
to be impossible, perhaps it could be explained in a 
sub-title that the extraneous machinery was a frag- 
ment of mowing-machine or something of the kind 
that the sheep had collided with and picked up in his 
flight. Boos, while admitting that this showed a con- 
siderable advance over my salmon-label suggestion of 
the morning, said that there were a number of limiting 
considerations which would render it impracticable. I 
forget what all of these were, but one of them was 
that our quarry couldn't be made to roll his eyes and 
register "consternation" and "mute reproach" in the 
close-ups. I began to see that there was a lot more 
to the movie game than I had ever dreamed. But 
what a stimulator of the imagination it was ! 

As there was nothing more to be done about the 
hunting and fishing shots for the present, we turned 
our attention to final preparations for what we had 
begun to call the "Hanging Glacier Picture." Roos 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 29 

said it would be necessary to sketch a rough sort of 
scenario in advance — nothing elaborate like "Broken 
Blossoms" or "The Perils of Pauline" (we hadn't the 
company for that kind of thing), but just the thread 
of a story to make the "continuity" ripple continu- 
ously. It would be enough, he thought, if I would 
enact the role of a gentleman-sportsman and allow 
the guides and packers to be just their normal selves. 
Then with these circulating in the foreground, he 
would film the various scenic features of the trip as 
they unrolled. All the lot of us would have to do 
would be to act naturally and stand or lounge grace- 
fully in those parts of the pictm'e where the presence 
of human beings would be best calculated to balance 
effectively and harmoniously the composition. I 
agreed cheerfully to the sportsman part of my role, 
but demurred as to "gentleman." I might manage it 
for a scene, but for a sustained effort it was out of the 
question. A compromise along this line was finally 
eflFected. I engaged to act as much like a gentleman 
as I could for the opening shot, after which I was to 
be allowed to lapse into the seeming of a simple 
sportsman who loved scenery-gazing more than the 
pursuit and slaying of goat, sheep and bear. Roos 
observed shrewdly that it would be better to have the 
sportsman be more interested in scenerj^ than game 
because, judging from our experience at Winder- 
mere, we would find more of the former than the lat- 
ter. He was also encouragingly sympathetic about 
my transient appearance as a gentleman. "I only 
want about fifty feet of that," he said as he gave me 



30 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

a propitiating pat on the back; "besides, it's all a 
matter of clothes anyhow." 

Before we turned in that night it transpired that 
Chester's hope of being the first to show moving pic- 
tures of the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers to the 
world was probably doomed to disappointment, or, 
at the best, that this honour would have to be shared 
with an equally ambitious rival. Byron Harmon, of 
Banff, formerly official photographer for the Ca- 
nadian Pacific, arrived at Invermere and announced 
that he was planning to go "up Horse Thief" and en- 
deavour to film a number of the remarkable scenic fea- 
tures which he had hitherto tried to picture in vain. 
His schedule was temporarily upset by the fact that 
we had already engaged the best pack-train and 
guides available. Seasoned mountaineer that he was, 
however, this was of small moment. A few hours' 
scurrying about had provided him with a light but 
ample outfit, consisting of four horses and two men, 
with which he planned to get away in the morning. 
He was not in the least perturbed by the fact that 
Roos had practically a day's start of him. "There's 
room for a hundred cameramen to work up there," he 
told me genially; "and the more the world is shown of 
the wonders of the Rockies and the Selkirks, the more 
it will want to see. It will be good to have your com- 
pany, and each of us ought to be of help to the other." 

I had some difficulty in bringing Roos to a similarly 
philosophical viewpoint. His "Hearst" training im- 
pelled him to brook no rivalry, to beat out the other 
man by any means that offered. He had the better 
packtrain, he said, to say nothing of a day's start, 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 31 

Also, he had the only dynamite and caps available that 
side of Golden, so that he would have the inside track 
for starting avalanches and creating artificial ice- 
bergs in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. I would 
like to think that it was my argument that, since it 
was not a "news" picture he was after, the man who 
took the most time to his work would be the one to get 
the best results, was what brought him round finally. 
I greatly fear, however, it was the knowledge that the 
generous Harmon had a number of flares that did the 
trick. He had neglected to provide flares himself, and 
without them work in the ice caves — second only in 
interest to the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers itself — 
would be greatly circumscribed. At any rate, he 
finally agreed to a truce, and we took Harmon out to 
the end of the road in our car the following morning. 
Of the latter's really notable work in picturing the 
mountains of western Canada I shall write later. 

The horses were waiting, saddled and packed, as 
we drove up to the rendezvous. The packer was a 
powerfully built fellow, with his straight black hair 
and high cheek bones betokening a considerable mix- 
ture of Indian blood. His name was Buckman — Jim 
Buckman. He was the village blacksmith of Athal- 
mere, Nixon explained. He was making plenty of 
money in his trade, but was willing to come along at a 
packer's wage for the sake of the experience as an 
actor. The lure of the movies was also responsible for 
the presence of Nixon's fourteen-year-old son, Gor- 
don, who had threatened to run away from home if he 
wasn't allowed to come along. He proved a useful 
acquisition — more than sufficiently so, it seemed to 



32 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

me, to compensate for what he did to the jam and 
honey. 

Roos called us around him and gave instructions 
for the "business" of the opening shot. Nixon and 
Jim were to be "picked up" taking the last of the 
slack out of a "diamond hitch," Gordon frolicking in 
the background with his dog. When the car drove 
up, Nixon was to take my saddle horse by the bridle, 
walk up and shake hands with me. Then, to make 
the transition from Civilization to the Primitive 
(movie people never miss a chance to use that word) 
with a click, I was to step directly from the car into 
my stirrups. "Get me!" admonished Roos; "straight 
from the running board to the saddle. Don't touch 
the ground at all. Make it snappy, all of you. I 
don't want any of you to grow into 'foot-lice.' " 

My saddle horse turned out to be a stockily-built 
grey of over 1200 pounds. He looked hard as nails 
and to have no end of endurance. But his shifty eye 
and back-laid ears indicated temperamentality, so that 
Nixon's warning that he "warn't exactly a lady's 
hawss" was a bit superfluous. "When you told me 
you tipped the beam at two-forty," he said, "I know'd 
'Grayback' was the only hawss that'd carry you up 
these trails. So I brung him in, and stuffed him up 
with oats, and here he is. He may dance a leetle on 
his toes jest now, but he'll gentle down a lot by the 
end of a week." 

Whether "Grayback" mastered all of the "busi- 
ness" of that shot or not is probably open to doubt, 
but that he took the "Make it snappy!" part to heart 
there was no question. He came alongside like a 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 33 

lamb, but the instant I started to make my transition 
from "Civilization to the Primitive with a click" he 
started climbing into the car. The only click I heard 
was when my ear hit the ground. Roos couldn't have 
spoiled any more film than I did cuticle, but, being a 
"Director," he made a good deal more noise about it. 
After barking his hocks on the fender, "Grayback" 
refused to be enticed within mounting distance of the 
car again, so finally, with a comparatively un-clicky 
transition from Civilization to the Primitive, I got 
aboard by the usual route from the ground. 

The next shot was a quarter of a mile farther up 
the trail. Here Roos found a natural sylvan frame 
through which to shoot the whole outfit as it came 
stringing along. Unfortunately, the "Director" 
failed to tell the actors not to look at the camera — 
that, once and for all, the clicking box must be reck- 
oned as a thing non-existent — and it all had to be done 
over again. The next time it was better, but the ac- 
tors still had a wooden expression on their faces. 
They didn't look at the camera, but the expression on 
their faces showed that they were conscious of it. 
Roos then instructed me to talk to my companions, or 
sing, or do anything that would take their minds off 
the camera and make them appear relaxed and nat- 
ural. That time we did it famously. As each, in 
turn, cantered by the sylvan bower with its clicking 
camera he was up to his neck "doing something.'* 
Nixon was declaiming Lincoln's Gettysburg speech 
as he had learned it from his phonograph, Gordon was 
calling his dog, Jim was larruping a straggling pinto 
and cursing it in fluent local idiom, and I was singing 



34. DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"Onward, Christian Soldiers!" We never had any 
trouble about "being natural" after that; but I hope 
no lip reader ever sees the pictures. 

After picking up Roos and his camera we made 
our real start. One pack-horse was reserved for the 
camera and tripod, and to prevent him from ranging 
from the trail and bumping the valuable apparatus 
against trees or rocks, his halter was tied to the tail 
of Nixon's saddle animal. Except that the latter*s 
spinal column must have suffered some pretty severe 
snakings when the camera-carrier went through cor- 
duroy bridges or lost his footings in fords, the ar- 
rangement worked most successfully. The delicate 
instrument was not in the least injured in all of the 
many miles it was jogged over some of the roughest 
trails I have ever travelled. 

The sunshine by which the last of the trail shots was 
made proved the parting glimmer of what had been a 
month or more of practically unbroken fair weather. 
Indeed, the weather had'^ been rather too fine, for, 
toward the end of the summer, lack of rain in western 
Canada invariably means forest fires. As these had 
been raging intermittently for several weeks all over 
British Columbia, the air had become thick with 
smoke, and at many places it was impossible to see 
for more than a mile or two in any direction. Both 
Roos and Harmon had been greatly hampered in 
their work about Banff and Lake Louise by the 
smoke, and both were, therefore, exceedingly anxious 
for early and copious rains to clear the air. Other- 
wise, they said, there was no hope of a picture of the 
Lake of the Hanging Glaciers that would be worth 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 35 

the film it was printed on. They must have rain. 
Their prayer was about to be answered, in full meas- 
ure, pressed down and running over — and then some. 

We had been encountering contending currents of 
hot and cold air all the way up the wagon-road from 
Invermere and the lower valley. Now, as we entered 
the mountains, these became more pronounced, taking 
the form of scurrying "dust-devils" that attacked 
from flank and van without method or premonitory 
signal. The narrowing gorge ahead was packed solid 
with a sullen phalanx of augmenting clouds, sombre- 
hued and sagging with moisture, and frequently il- 
lumined with forked lightning flashes discharged from 
their murky depths. Nixon, anxious to make camp 
before the storm broke, jogged the horses steadily all 
through the darkening afternoon. It was a point 
called "Sixteen-mile" he was driving for, the first 
place we would reach where there was room for the 
tent and feed for the horses. We were still four 
miles short of our destination when the first spatter 
of ranging drops opened up, and from there on the 
batteries of the storm concentrated on us all the way. 

We made camp in a rain driving solidly enough to 
deflect the stroke of an axe. I shall not enlarge upon 
the acute discomfort of it. Those who have done it 
will understand; those who have not would never be 
able to. It was especially trying on the first day out, 
before the outfit had become shaken down and one had 
learned where to look for things. Nixon's consum- 
mate woodcraftsmanship was put to a severe test, 
but emerged triumphant. So, too, Jim, who proved 
himself as impervious to rain as to ill-temper. The 



36 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

fir boughs for the tent floor came in dripping, of 
course, but there were enough dry tarpaulins and 
blankets to blot up the heaviest of the moisture, and 
the glowing little sheet-iron stove licked up the rest. 
A piping hot dinner drove out the last of the chill, 
and we spent a snug, comfy evening listening to Nixon 
yarn about his mountaineering exploits and of the 
queer birds from New York and London whom he had 
nursed through strange and various intervals of 
moose and sheep-hunting in the Kootenays and 
Rockies. We slept dry but rather cold, especially 
Roos, who ended up by curling round the stove and 
stoking between shivers. Nixon and Jim drew gen- 
erously on their own blanket rolls to help the both of 
us confine our ebbing animal heat, and yet appeared 
to find not the least difficulty in sleeping comfortably 
under half the weight of cover that left us shaking. 
It was all a matter of what one was used to, of course, 
and in a few days we began to harden. 

It was September tenth that we had started from 
Invermere, hoping at the time to be able to accomplish 
what we had set out to do in from four to six days. 
The rain which had come to break the long dry spell 
put a very different face on things, however. The 
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth we were held in our 
first camp by an almost continuous downpour, which 
turned the mountain streams into torrents and raised 
Horse Thief till it lapped over the rim of the flat 
upon which our tent was pitched. The night of the 
thirteenth, with a sharp drop of the temperature, the 
rain turned to snow, and we crawled out on the four- 
teenth to find the valley under a light blanket of 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 37 

white. Then the clouds broke away and the sunshine 
and shadows began playing tag over the scarps and 
buttresses of the encompassing amphitheatre of 
mountains. For the first time there was a chance for 
a glimpse of the new world into which we had come. 
The transition from the cultivation and the gentle 
wooded slopes of Windermere was startling. Under 
the mask of the storm clouds we had penetrated from 
a smooth, rounded, pleasant country to one that was 
cliffy and pinnacled and bare — a country that was all 
on end, a land whose bones showed through. A tow- 
ering Matterhorn reared its head six or eight thou- 
sand feet above us, and so near that slabs of rock 
cracked away from its scarred summit were lying 
just across the trail from the tent. The peaks walling 
in Horse Thief to the north were not so high but no 
less precipitous and barren, while to the west a jumble 
of splintered pimiacles whose bases barred the way 
were still lost in the witch-dance of the clouds. A 
tourist folder would have called it a "Land of Ti- 
tans," but Jim, leaning on his axe after nicking off a 
fresh back-log for the camp fire, merely opined it was 
"some skookum goat country. But not a patch," he 
added, "to what we'll be hittin' to-night if we get them 
geesly hawsses rounded up in time fer a start 'fore 
noon." 

It appeared that the horses, with their grazing 
spoiled by the snow, had become restless, broken 
through the barrier Nixon had erected at a bridge just 
below camp, and started on the back trail for Inver- 
mere. As their tracks showed that they had broken 
into a trot immediately beyond the bridge, it looked 



38 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

like a long stern-chase, and Nixon did not reckon on 
being able to hit the trail for several hours. Roos 
grasped the occasion to make a couple of "camp life" 
shots his fertile brain had conceived the idea of during 
the long storm-bound days of enforced inaction. In 
one of these the "sportsman" was to go to bed in sil- 
houette by candlelight. Ostensibly this was to be the 
shadow of a man crawling into his blankets inside of 
the tent, and taken from the outside. In reality, how- 
ever, Roos set up his camera inside of the tent and 
shot the antics of the shadow the sunlight threw on the 
canvas when I went through the motions of turning in 
close against the outside of the wall. This went off 
smartly and snappily; but I would have given much 
for a translation of the voluble comments of a passing 
Indian who pulled up to watch the agile action of the 
retiring "sportsman." 

It was while Roos was rehearsing me for this shot 
that Gordon must have heard him iterating his inva- 
riable injunction that I should not be a "foot-hog," 
meaning, I shall hardly need to explain, that I should 
be quick in my movements so as not to force him to use 
an undue footage of film. A little later I overheard 
the boy asking Jim what a "foot-hog" was. "I don't 
quite kumtrux myself," the sturdy blacksmith-packer 
replied, scratching his head. "It sounds as if it might 
be suthin like pig's feet, but they want actin' as if 
they wuz ready to eat anythin', 'less it was each other." 
Now that I think of it, I can see how the clash of the 
artistic temperaments of "Director" and "Star" over 
just about every one of the shots they made might 
have given Jim that impression. 












THE "TUKiNii\G-IN" SCENE SHOT IN SILHOUETTE (ubovt) 
"REVERSE" OF THE "GOING-TO-BED" SHOT (beloiv) 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 39 

The other shot we made that morning was one 
which Roos had labelled as "Berry Picking and Eat- 
ing" in his tentative scenario. The "sportsman" was 
to fare forth, gather a bowlful of raspberries, bring 
them back to camp, put sugar and condensed milk on 
them, and finally eat them, all before the camera. I 
objected to appearing in this for two reasons: for one, 
because berry-picking was not a recognized out-door 
sport, and, for another, because I didn't like rasp- 
berries. Roos admitted that berry-picking was not a 
sport, but insisted he had to have the scene to pre- 
serve his continuity. "Gathering and eating these 
products of Nature," he explained, "shows how far 
the gentleman you were in the first scene has de- 
scended toward the Primitive. You will be getting 
more and more Primitive right along, but we must 
register each step on the film, see?" As for my dis- 
taste for raspberries, Roos was quite willing that, 
after displaying the berries heaped in the bowl in a 
close-up, I should do the real eating with strawberry 
jam. It was that last which overcame my spell of 
"temperament." Both Roos and Gordon already had 
me several pots down in the matter of jam consump- 
tion, and I was glad of the chance to climb back a 
notch. 

We found raspberry bushes by the acre but, thanks 
to the late storm, almost no berries. This didn't mat- 
ter seriously in the picking shot, for which I managed 
to convey a very realistic effect in pantomime, but for 
the heaped-high close-up of the bowl it was another 
matter. One scant handful was the best that the four 
of us, foraging for half an hour, could bring in. But 



40 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

I soon figured a way to make these do. Opening a 
couple of tins of strawberry jam into the bowl, I 
rounded over smoothly the bright succulent mass and 
then made a close-set raspberry mosaic of one side of 
it. That did famously for the close-up. As I settled 
back 'for the berry-eating shot Roos cut in sharply 
with his usual: "Snappy now! Don't be a foot-hog!" 
Gordon, who had been digging his toe into the mud for 
some minutes, evidently under considerable mental 
stress, lifted his head at the word. ^ "Hadn't you bet- 
ter say 'jam-hog', Mr. Roos?" he queried plaintively. 

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use," was the de- 
jected reply. Roos was right. At the word "Ac- 
tion !" I dug in with my spoon on the unpaved side of 
the bowl of jam, and several turns before the crank 
ceased revolving there was nothing left but a few 
daubed raspberries and several broad red smears ra- 
diating from my mouth. Roos tossed the two empty 
jam tins into the murky torrent of Horse Thief 
Creek and watched them bob away down stream. 
"You're getting too darn primitive," he said peevishly. 

It was nearly eleven o'clock before Nixon came 
with the horses; but we had camp struck and the 
packs made, so there was little delay in taking the 
trail. The bottom of the valley continued fairly 
open for a few miles, with the swollen stream serpen- 
tining across it, turned hither and thither by huge log- 
jams and fortress-like rock islands. Where the North 
Fork came tumbling into the main creek in a fine run 
of cascades there was a flat several acres in extent and 
good camping ground. Immediately above the val- 
ley narrowed to a steep-sided canyon, and continued 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 41 

so all the way up to the snow and glacier-line. The 
trail from now on was badly torn and washed and 
frequently blocked with dead-falls. Or rather it had 
been so blocked up to a day or two previously. Now 
I understood the reason for Nixon's complaisance 
when Harmon's outfit, travelling in the rain, had 
passed our camp a couple of days before. "Don't 
worry, sonny," he had said in comforting the impetu- 
ous Roos; "we won't lose any time, and we will save 
a lot of chopping." And so it had worked out. Har- 
mon's men had cut the dead-falls out of the whole 
twelve miles of trail between North Fork and the 
Dragon-Tail Glacier. 

Even so it was a beastly stretch of trail. The 
stream, completely filling the bottom of the gorge, 
kept the path always far up the side of the mountain. 
There were few dangerous precipices, but one had 
always to be on the lookout tQ keep his head from 
banging on dead-falls just high enough to clear a 
pack, and which, therefore, no one would take the 
trouble to cut away. The close-growing shrubbery 
was dripping with moisture, and even riding second to 
Nixon, who must have got all the worst of it, I found 
myself drenched at the end of the first half mile. 
Riding through wet underbrush can wet a man as no 
rain ever could. No waterproof ever devised offers 
the least protection against it ; nothing less than a safe 
deposit vault on wheels could do so. 

Streams, swollen by the now rapidly melting snow, 
came tumbling down — lialf cataract, half cascade — all 
along tlie way. At the worst crossings these had been 
roughly bridged, as little footing for men or horses 



42 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was afforded by the clean-swept rock. Only one 
crossing of the main stream was necessary. It was a 
good natural ford at low water, but quite out of the 
question to attempt at high. We found it about me- 
dium — a little more than belly deep and something 
like an eight-mile current. With a foot more water it 
would have commenced to get troublesome; with 
another two feet, really dangerous. That prospect, 
with the rapidly rising water, was reserved for our 
return trip. 

Such a road was, of course, wdnderfully pictur- 
esque and colourful, and Roos, with a quick eye for an 
effective composition, made the most of his oppor- 
tunities for "trail shots." A picture of this kind, 
simple enough to look at on the screen, often took half 
an hour or more to make. The finding of a pictur- 
esque spot on the trail was only the beginning. This 
was useless unless the light was right and a satisfac- 
tory place to set up the tripod was available. When 
this latter was found, more often than not a tree or 
two had to be felled to open up the view to the trail. 
Then — as the party photographed had to be complete 
each time, and with nothing to suggest the presence of 
the movie camera or its operator — Roos' saddle horse 
and the animal carrying his outfit had to be shuttled 
along out of line and tied up where they would not get 
in the picture. This was always a ticklish operation on 
the narrow trails, and once or twice the sheer impos- 
sibility of segregating the superfluous animals caused 
Roos to forego extremely effective shots. 

The mountains became higher and higher, and 
steeper and steeper, the farther we fared. And the 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 43 

greater the inclines, the more and more precarious 
was the hold of the winter's snow upon the mountain- 
sides. At last we climbed into a veritable zone of 
avalanches — a stretch where, for a number of miles, 
the deep-gouged troughs of the snow-slides followed 
each other like the gullies in a rain-washed mud- 
bank. Slide-time was in the Spring, of course, so the 
only trouble we encountered was in passing over the 
terribly violated mountainsides. If the trail came to 
the track of an avalanche far up on the mountainside, 
it meant descending a cut-bank to the scoured bed- 
rock, click-clacking along over this with the shod 
hooves of the horses striking sparks at every step for 
a hundred yards or more, and then climbing out again. 
If the path of the destroyer was encountered low 
down, near the river, the way onward led over a fifty- 
feet-high pile of upended trees, boulders and sand. 
In nearly every instance one could see where the 
slides had dammed the stream a hundred feet high or 
more, and here and there were visible swaths cut in 
the timber of the further side, where the buffer of 
the opposite mountain had served to check the onrush. 
The going for the horses was hard at all times, but 
worst perhaps where the dam of a slide had checked 
the natural drainage and formed a bottomless bog too 
large for the trail to avoid. Here the hard-blown 
animals floundered belly deep in mud and rotten 
wood, as did also their riders when they had to slide 
from the saddles to give their mounts a chance to reach 
a solid footing. The polished granite of the runways 
of the slide was almost as bad, for here the horses 
were repeatedly down from slipping. My air-tread- 



44 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ing, toe-dancing "Grayback" of the morning was 
gone in the back and legs long before we reached the 
end. My weight and the pace (Nixon was driving 
hard to reach a camping place before a fresh gather- 
ing of storm clouds were ready to break) had proved 
too much for him. The fighting light was gone from 
his eye, his head was between his legs, and his breath 
was expelled with a force that seemed to be scouring 
the lining from his bleeding nostrils. Dropping back 
to slacken his girths and breathe him a moment before 
leading him up the last long run of zigzags, I heard 
the sobbing diminuendo of the pack-train die out in 
the sombre depths above. It was like the shudder of 
sounds that rise through a blow-hole where the sea 
waves are pounding hard on the mouth of a subter- 
ranean grotto. 

I had developed a warm and inclusive sympathy for 
"Grayback" before I reached the crest of that final 
shoulder of mountain we had to surmount, but lost 
most of it on the slide back to the valley when, in lieu 
of anything else to hand as he found himself slipping, 
he started to canter up my spine. I found Nixon and 
Jim throwing off packs on a narrow strip of moss- 
covered bottom between the drop-curtain of the fir- 
covered mountainside and the bank of the creek. It 
was practically the only place for a camp anywhere 
in the closely-walled valley. Slide-wreckage claimed 
all the rest of it. An upward trickle of lilac smoke a 
half mile above told where Harmon's outfit had ef- 
fected some sort of lodgment, but it was on a geesly 
slither of wet side-hill, Nixon said, and badly exposed 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 45 

to the wind that was always sucking down from the 
glacier. 

The moss underfoot was saturated with water, but 
with an hour of daylight and pines close at hand this 
was a matter of small moment. We were well under 
cover by the time the snuffer of the darkness clapped 
sharply down, and with a good day's supply of wood 
for stove and camp-fire piled up outside the tent. 
Not having stopped for lunch on the trail, we were 
all rather "peckish" (to use Nixon's expression) by 
the time dinner was ready. After that there was 
nothing much to bother about. Nixon told goat hunt- 
ing stories all evening, putting a fresh edge on his axe 
the while with a little round pocket whetstone. A 
Canadian guide is as cranky about his private and 
personal axe as a Chicago clothing drummer is about 
his razors. So it was only to be expected that Nixon 
took it a bit hard when Roos had employed his keenly 
whetted implement to crack open a hunk of quartz 
with. That was the reason, doubtless, why most of his 
stories had to do with the fool escapades of various of 
the geesly (that was Nixon's favourite term of con- 
tempt, and a very expressive one it was) tenderfeet 
he had guided. But one of his yarns (and I think a 
true one) was of a time that he was caught by a storm 
at ten thousand feet in the Rockies and had to spend 
the night on the rocks a mile above the timber-line. 
Lightly dressed and without a blanket, the only pro- 
tection he had from a temperature many degrees be- 
low freezing was from the carcasses of the two freshly- 
shot goats that had lured him there. Splitting these 



46 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

down the middle with his hunting knife, he had cov- 
ered himself with them, entrails and all, in the hope 
that the remaining animal heat would keep him alive 
till daylight. Man and goat were frozen to one stiff 
mass by morning, but the man had still enough vital- 
ity to crack himself loose and descend to his camp. 
The exposure and hardship some of these northwest 
mountaineers have survived is almost beyond belief. 

I went to sleep with the sizzle of snowilakes on the 
dying embers of the camp-fire in my ears, and awoke 
to find the tent roof sagging dowil on my ear under 
the weight of a heavy night's fall. The storm was 
over for the moment, but the clouds were still lurking 
ominously above the glacier, and there was little light 
for pictures. Harmon, crossing the several channels 
of the creek on fallen logs, came over later in the day. 
He had been stormbound ever since his arrival, he said, 
and had done nothing at all in taking either stills or 
movies yet. But fires and smoke were finished for the 
year now, he added philosophically, and it was his in- 
tention to remain until he got what he was after. 
Before he left he told me something of his work. 
"Stills," it appeared, were the main thing with him; 
his movie work was carried on merely as a side-line to 
pay the expenses of trips he could not otherwise af- 
ford. He had been photographing in the Selkirks 
and Rockies for a dozen years, and he would not be 
content to rest until the sets of negatives — as nearly 
perfect as they could be made — of every notable peak 
and valley of western Canada. Then he was going to 
hold a grand exhibition of mountain photographs at 
Banff and retire. The Lake of the Hanging Gla- 



UP HORSE THIEF CREEK 47 

ciers was one of the very few great scenic features he 
had never photographed, and he only hoped he would 
be able to do it justice. The fine reverence of Har- 
mon's attitude toward the mountains that he loved 
was completely beyond Roos' ken. "I never worries 
about not doing 'em justice — not for a minute. What 
does worry me is whether or not these cracked up lakes 
and glaciers are going to turn out worth my coming 
in to do justice to. Get me?" "Yes, I think so," re- 
plied the veteran with a very patient smile. 



CHAPTER III 

AT THE GLACIER 

Snow flurries kept us close to camp all that day. 
The next one, the sixteenth, was better, though 
still quite hopeless for movie work. After lunch we 
set out on foot for the big glacier, a mile above, from 
which the creek took its life. The clouds still hung 
too low to allow anything of the mountains to be seen, 
but one had the feeling of moving in a long narrow 
tunnel through which a cold jet of air was constantly 
being forced. A few hundred yards above our camp 
was a frightful zone of riven trees mixed with gravel 
and boulders. It was one of the strangest, one of the 
savagest spots I ever saw. It was the battle ground 
of two rival avalanches, Nixon explained, two great 
slides which, with the impetus of six or eight thousand 
feet of run driving uncounted millions of tons of snow 
and earth, met there every spring in primeval combat. 
No man had ever seen the fantastic onslaught (for 
no man could reach that point in the springtime) , but 
it was certain that the remains of it made a mighty 
dam all the way across the valley. Then the creek 
would be backed up half way to the glacier, when it 
would accumulate enough power to sweep the obstruc- 
tion away and scatter it down to the Columbia. 

Straight down the respective paths of the rival 
slides, and almost exactly opposite each other, tumbled 
two splendid cascades. The hovering storm clouds 

48 



AT THE GLACIER 49 

cut off further view of them a few hundred feet above 
the valley, but Nixon said that they came plunging 
like that for thousands of feet, from far up into the 
belt of perpetual snow. The one to the east (which 
at the moment seemed to be leaping straight out of 
the heart of a sinister slaty-purple patch of cumulo- 
nimbus) drained the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers; 
that to the west a desolate rock and ice-walled valley 
which was rimmed by some of the highest summits in 
the Selkirks. Our road to the lake would be wet with 
the spray of the former for a good part of the distance. 

We were scrambling through a land of snow-slides 
all the way to the glacier. For the first half mile 
patches of stunted fir survived here and there, 
due to being located in the lee of some cliff or 
other rocky outcrop which served to deflect the spring- 
time onslaughts from above; then all vegetation 
ceased and nothing but snow-churned and ice-ground 
rock fragments remained. All along the last quarter 
of a mile the successive stages of the glacier's retreat 
were marked by great heaps of pulverized rock, like 
the tailings at the mouth of a mine. Only the face 
of the glacier and the yawning ice caves were visible 
under the cloud-pall. The queerly humped uplift of 
the "dragon" moraine could be dunly guessed in the 
shifting mists that whirled and eddied in the icy 
draughts from the caves. 

Our principal object in going up to the grottoes on 
so inclement a day was to experiment with our dyna- 
mite on the ice, with a view to turning our knowledge 
to practical use in making artificial icebergs for the 
movies in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Se- 



50 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

lecting what looked like a favourable spot at the base 
of what seemed a "fracturable" pinnacle of grey- 
green ice, we dug a three-feet-deep hole with a long- 
handled chisel, pushed in two sticks of sixty per cent, 
dynamite, tamped it hard with snow after attaching 
a lengthy fuse, touched a match to the latter and re- 
tired to a safe distance. The result, to put it in Roos' 
latest imported slang, was an "oil can," which con- 
notes about the same thing as fizzle, I took it. There's 
a deal of kick in two sticks of "sixty per" set off in 
rock, but here it was simply an exuberant "whouf" 
after the manner of a blowing porpoise. A jet of soft 
snow and ice shot up some distance, but the pinnacle 
never trembled. And the hole opened up was smooth- 
sided and clean, as if melted out with hot water. Not 
the beginning of a crack radiated from it. Jim 
opined that a slower burning powder might crack ice, 
but there was certainly no hope of "sixty per" doing 
the trick. It was evident that we would have to find 
some other way of making artificial icebergs. We 
did. We made them of rock. But I won't anticipate. 
It snowed again in the night, snowed itself out for a 
while. The following morning it was warm and bril- 
liantly clear, and for the first time there was a chance 
to see what sort of a place it was to which we had en- 
tered. For a space the height and abruptness of the 
encompassing walls seemed almost appalling; it was 
more like looking up out of an immeasurably vast 
crater than from a valley. All around there were 
thousands of feet of sheer rocky cliff upon which no 
snow could effect a lodgment; and above these more 
thousands of feet solid with the glittering green of 



AT THE GLACIER 51 

glacial ice and the polished marble of eternal snow. 
The jagged patch of sky was a vivid imperial blue, 
bright and solid-looking like a fragment of rich old 
porcelain. The morning sun, cutting through the 
sharp notches between the southeastern peaks, was 
dappling the snow fields of the western walls in gay 
splashes of flaming rose and saffron, interspersed 
with mottled shadows of indigo and deep purple. 
Reflected back to the still shadowed slopes of the 
eastern walls, these bolder colours became a blended 
iridescence of amethyst, lemon and pale misty laven- 
der. The creek flowed steely cold, with fluffs of grey- 
wool on the riffles. The tree patches were black, dead 
funereal black, throwing back no ray of light from 
their down-swooping branches. The air was so clear 
that it seemed almost to have assumed a palpability of 
its own. One imagined things floating in it; even that 
it might tinkle to the snip of a finger nail, like a crys- 
tal rim. 

In movies as in hay-making, one has to step lively 
while the sun shines. This was the first good shooting 
light we had had, and no time was lost in taking ad- 
vantage of it. Long before the sun had reached the 
bottom of the valley we were picking our way up 
toward the foot of the glacier, this time on horseback. 
Early as we had started, the enterprising Harmon had 
been still earlier. He was finishing his shots of the 
face of the glacier and the mouth of the ice caves as 
we came up. He would now leave the field clear for 
Roos for an hour, he said, while he climbed to the 
cliffs above the glacier to make a goat-hunting picture. 
That finished, he would return and, by the light of his 



52 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

flares both parties could shoot the interior of the ice 
caves. Before starting on his long climb, Harmon 
briefly outlined the scenario of his "goat" picture, 
part of which had already been shot. Two prospec- 
tors — impersonated by his guide and packer — hav- 
ing been in the mountains for many weeks without a 
change of diet, had become terribly sick of bacon. 
Finally, when one of them had disgustedly thrown 
his plate of it on the ground, even the camp dog, after 
a contemptuous sniff, had turned his back. He had 
had no trouble in getting the nlen to register "dis- 
gust," Harmon explained, but that "contemptuous 
sniff" business with the dog was more difficult. After 
their voracious Airedale pup had wolfed three plates 
of bacon without paying the least heed to the director's 
attempts to frighten him off at the psychological mo- 
ment, they had tried thin strips of birch-bark, trimmed 
to represent curling rashers. Even these the hungry 
canine had persisted in licking, probably because they 
came from a greasy plate. Finally Harmon hit upon 
the expedient of anointing the birch-bark rashers with 
some of the iodine carried as an antiseptic in the event 
of cuts and scratches. "If the pup ate it, of course it 
would die," he explained ; "but that would be no more 
than he deserved in such a case." But the plan worked 
perfectly. After his first eager lick, the outraged 
canine had "sniffed contemptuously" at the pungent 
fumes of the iodine, and then backed out of the pic- 
ture with a wolfish snarl on his lifted lip. 

Then the packer registered "fresh meat hunger" 
("cut-in" of a butcher shop to be made later), imme- 
diately after which the guide pointed to the cliffs 



AT THE GLACIER 53 

above the camp where some wild goats were frisking. 
By the aid of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot 
the goats as they would appear through the binoculars 
the guide and packers excitedly passed back and forth 
between them. And now they were going forth to 
shoot the goats. Or rather they were going forth to 
"shoot" the goats, for these had already been shot 
with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in packing 
his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Har- 
mon had sent out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the pre- 
vious afternoon, with orders to shoot a goat — as fine a 
specimen as possible — and leave it in some picturesque 
spot where a re-shooting could be "shot" with the 
camera when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyro- 
lese had experienced little difliculty in bringing down 
two goats. One of these — a huge "Billy" — he had 
left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet 
above the big glacier, and the other — a half -grown 
kid — he had brought into camp to cut up for the 
"meat-guzzling" shots with which guide, packer and 
canine were to indulge in as a finale. It was a clev- 
erly conceived "nature" picture, one with a distinct 
"educational" value; or at least it was such when 
viewed from "behind the camera." Roos was plainly 
jealous over it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and 
as Harmon's goat was hardly likely to be "borrow- 
able" after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a thousand 
feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have 
to make up by putting it over Harmon on his "glacier 
stuff," he said philosophically. And he did; though it 
was only through the virtuosity of his chief actor. 
Harmon had confined liis glacier shots to one of his 



54 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

party riding up over the rocks, and another of it 
grouped at the entrance of the largest cave and look- 
ing in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined 
to take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket 
under hanging ice. Boos was new to the mountains, 
so didn't labour under any such handicap. His idea 
was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the 
stream and on into the cave. The approach and the 
entrance into the mouth of the cave were to be shot 
first from the outside, and then, in silhouette, from the 
inside. ' 

Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had 
settled two or three feet since we were there yesterday 
and that the heat seemed to be honeycombing all the 
lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he 
didn't like the idea of taking horses inside, but would 
do so if it would make a better picture that way. He 
was quite willing to take chances if there was any 
reason for it. But what he did object to was trying 
to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big 
boulders when it would be perfectly plain to any one 
who saw the picture that there was comparatively 
smooth going on either side. "You can easy break a 
hawss' leg in. one of them geesly holes," he com- 
plained; "but the loss of a hawss isn't a patch to what 
I'd feel to have some guy that I've worked with see the 
pictur' and think I picked that sluiceway as the best 
way up." 

Boos replied with a rush of technical argument in 
which there was much about "continuity" and "back- 
lighting," and something about using the "trick crank 
so that the action can be speeded up when it's run." 



AT THE GLACIER 55 

Not knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally 
shrugged his shoulders helplessly and signalled for 
Jini to bring up the horses. There was no need of a 
"trick crank" to speed up the action in the stream, for 
that glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried 
away everything in its course save boulders four or 
five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a temper, hit the 
ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did 
Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered 
through without mishap. "Grayback" tried to climb 
up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped with all 
four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked 
out my stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting 
considerably rolled and more than considerably^ wet. 
To Roos' great indignation, this occurred just omtside 
the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to 
do it over again. 

Taking the horses inside the cave was a distmctly 
ticklish performance, though there could be no ques- 
tion of its effectiveness as a picture. Roos set up a 
hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty -feet- 
high mouth and directed us to ride forward ujitil a 
broad splashing jet of water from the roof blocked 
our way, and then swing round and beat it out. ' Beat 
it out snappy!" he repeated. "Get me?" "Yep, I got 
you," muttered Nixon; "you're in luck if nothin' else 
does." 

The ice that arched above the entrance looked ilo me 
like the salt-eaten packing round an ice-cream can as 
we pushed up and under it. The horses could hirdly 
have noticed this, and it must have been their insliincts 
— their good sound horse-sense — that warned them 



56 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

that a dark hole full of hollow crackings and groanings 
and the roar of falling water was no place for self-re- 
specting equines to venture. It took a deal of spur- 
ring and swearing to force them inside, and most of 
the linear distance gained was covered in circles on 
their hind legs. It was old "Grayback" whose nerves 
gave way first; he that started the stampede back to 
light and sunshine. There was no question but what 
we "beat it snappy." 

Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. "That 
photographed like a million doll-ars," he cried with 
enthusiasm. "Now just one thing more. . . ." 
And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart 
ever since he chanced onto that "natural shower bath" 
in the cave the previous afternoon. No one could deny 
that it was a natural shower bath. And since it was 
a natural shower bath, what could be more natural 
than for some one to take a shower under it? How 
would Nixon feel about trying it? Or Jim? He ad- 
mitted that it might be something of a shock, but he 
was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars 
be fair? Or say twenty? Or why not twenty-five? 
He knew Mr. Chester didn't reckon cost when it was 
a question of getting a high class, he might sJly a 
unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a 
bit snappily, said his rheumatism put him out of the 
running, and Jim was equally decided. Money 
wouldn't tempt him to go even into the Columbia at 
Windermere, let alone a liquid icicle under a glacier. 

And right then and there I did a thing which Roos 
maintained to the end of our partnership repaid him 
for all the grief and worry I had caused him to date, 



AT THE GLACIER 57 

and much that was still to accrue. "Smce I've got 
to take a bath and dry these wet togs out sooner or 
later," I said with a great assumption of nonchalance, 
"perhaps the ice cave will do as well as anywhere else. 
Just promise me you won't spring a flare on the scene, 
and build a fire to dry my clothes by. ..." Roos 
was gathering wood for a fire before I finished speak- 
ing. As for the flares, Harmon had not given him 
any yet. It was only a silhouette he wanted — but 
that would show up like a million dollars in the spray 
and ice. There never had been such a picture; per- 
haps would never be again. I wasn't joking, was I? 
And primitive . . . 

"Go on and set up," I cut in with. "I'll be there 
by the time you're ready to shoot. And don't ever 
let me hear you say primitive again. Oh, yes — and 
you needn't remind me to 'Be snappy!' There won't 
be any trouble on that score. Just make sure your 
lens is fast enough to catch the action." 

I've had many a plunge overboard off the Cali- 
fornia coast that shocked me more than that "natural 
shower bath" did, but never a one with so exhilarant 
a reaction. Stripping off my wet clothes by the fire, 
I slipped into my big hooded "lammy" coat and hip- 
pity-hopped into the cave. Roos, set up ten yards 
inside the splashing jet from the roof, was already 
standing by to shoot. At his call of "Action!" I 
jumped out of my coat and into the black, unsparkling 
column of water. There was a sharp sting to the im- 
pact, but it imparted nothing of the numbing ache 
that accompanies immersion in water a number of 
degrees less cold than this — a feeling which I came 



58 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

later to know only too well on the Columbia. Nixon 
had warned me against tempting Providence again 
by making any unnecessary racket in the cave, but it 
was no use. No one could have the fun that I was 
having and not holler. It was against nature. 
Whooping like a Comanche, I continued my hydro- 
terpsichorean revel until a muffled "Nuff" from Roos 
called a halt. He had come to the end of his roll. 
I have been in more of a shiver coming out of the 
Adriatic at the Lido in August than I was when I 
ambled back to dry off by the firfe and the sunshine. 
Glowing with warmth, I even loafed along with my 
dressing, as one does at Waikiki. 

"You'd make a fortune pulling the rough stuff in 
the movies," Roos exclaimed, patting me on the back. 
"You've got everything the real gripping cave-man 
has to have — size, beef, a suggestion of brutal, ele- 
mental force, primitive. ..." I chucked a burn- 
ing brand at him and went over to borrow Nixon's 
glass. A shot from far up the cliffs told that Har- 
mon's "goat-hunt" was in full cry. The real thrill 
of the day was about to come off; rather more of a 
thrill, indeed, than any one was prepared for, Harmon 
included. 

While we had been filming our "cave stuff" Har- 
mon had finished setting the stage for his picture. 
He had two shots to make — one of his packers firing 
at the goat at the top of the cliff, and the other of 
the body of the goat falling to the glacier. Conrad, 
the Tyrolean, climbing like a fly, had scaled the face 
of the cliff and was standing by for the signal to start 
the goat "falling." The shot which had attracted my 



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ROSS AND HARMON. DRAGON MORAINE IN DISTANCE ( above) 
THE HORSES IN THE MOUTH OF THE ICE CAVE (beloiv) 



AT THE GLACIER 59 

attention had been the packer discharging his rifle 
at the goat, which had been propped up in a hfe-hke 
position, as though peering down onto the glacier. 
Harmon was still cranking when I got hun in focus, 
while the packer had jumped to his feet and was 
executing a pas seul evidently intended to convey the 
impression he had made a hit. A curl of blue smoke 
from his rifle was still floating in the air. They had 
contrived that effective little touch by dribbling a bit 
of melted butter down the barrel before firing. 
Smokeless powder is hardly "tell-tale" enough for 
movie work. 

Harmon now moved over and set up at the foot of 
the cliff, apparently to get as near as possible to the 
point where the goat was going to hit. As the sequel 
proves, he judged his position to a hair. Now he made 
his signal. I saw the flutter of his handkerchief. The 
goat gave a convulsive leap, and then shot straight out 
over the brink of the cliff. From where we stood I 
could plainly see the useful Conrad "pulling the 
strings," but from where Harmon was set up this 
would hardly show. He was too careful to overlook a 
point like that in a "nature picture." The white body 
caromed sharply off a couple of projecting ledges, 
and then, gathering momentum, began to describe a 
great parabola which promised to carry it right to the 
foot of the cliff. 

I had kept my eyes glued to the glass from the 
start, but it was Nixon's unaided vision which was 
first to catch the drift of what was impending. "You 
couldn't drive a six-hawss team 'tween the side o' 
Mista Ha'mon's head and the trail in the air that 



60 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

geesly goat's going to make passing by," he said with 
a calculating drawl. "Not so su' you could squeeze a 
j)ack-hawss through." Then, a couple of seconds 
later: "No' ev'n a big dawg." And almost immedi- 
ately: "By Gawd, it's going to get him!" 

And that surely was what it looked like, to every 
one at least but the calmly cranking Harmon. He 
went on humping his back above the finder, and I 
could see the even rise and fall of his elbow against 
the snow. The dot of white had become a streak of 
grey, and it was the swift augmentation of this in 
his finder which finally (as he told me later) caused 
Harmon suddenly to duck. To me it looked as if 
the flying streak had passed right through him, but he 
was still there at the foot of his tripod after the Bolt 
of Wrath, striking the surface of the glacier with a 
resounding impact, threw up a fountain of pulverized 
snow and laid still. He was never quite sure whether 
it was the almost solid cushion of air or a side-swipe 
from a hoof or horn that joggled the tripod out of 
true. It was a near squeeze, for the flying body, 
which must have weighed all of two hundred pounds, 
was frozen hard as a rock. Conrad came staggering 
down with the remnants of the battered trunk over his 
shoulders. Only the heart and liver were fit to eat. 
The rest was a sausage of churned meat and bone 
splinters. There was no question about its fall hav- 
ing limbered it up. 

The illumination of the cave by the calcium flares 
was beautiful beyond words to describe, or at least so 
I was told. The first one was a failure, through the 
outward draught of air carrying the smoke back onto 



AT THE GLACIER 61 

the cameras. I had set this off in a side gallery, about 
a hundred yards in from the mouth, with the idea of 
throwing a sort of concealed back hght. Foolishly 
opening my eyes while the calcium was burning, I was 
completely blinded by the intense glare and did not 
regain my sight for several minutes. Harmon's 
packer, who held the next flare set off — this time to 
the leeward of the cameras — had still worse luck. A 
flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his 
sleeve and inflicted a raw, round burn with half the 
colours of the spectrum showing in its concentric rings 
of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing 
nerve in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle 
of the flare and thus ruin the picture. I most cer- 
tainly would never have done so myself. Roos de- 
scribed the glittering ice walls as a "veritable 
Aladdin's Cave of jewels," and only regretted that he 
couldn't have had that lighting on my shower-bath. 

That night we tried a camp-fire scene by flare. 
Roos set up on the further bank of the side channel 
of the creek which flowed past the tent. Between the 
door of the tent and the water a hole was dug in such 
a way that light from it would shine on a group in 
front of the tent but not on the lens of the camera. 
The glow from a flare burning in this hole represented 
the camp-fire. I was supposed to stroll up and tell 
a jovial story to Nixon, Jim and Gordon, who were 
to be "picked up" already seated around the fire. I 
made my entrance very snappily, but, unluckily, the 
blanket roll upon which I sat do^vn spread out and 
let me back against the corner of the glowing sheet- 
iron stove, which was set up just inside the tent open- 



62 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ing. Seeing I had not rolled out of the picture, Roos 
shouted for me to carry on, as it was the last flare. 
So, with the reek of burning wool rising behind me, 
I did carry on, making plausible gestures intended 
to convey the idea that the bit of comedy was just a 
humorous piece of by-play of my own. I carried on 
for something over half a minute. The only circum- 
stance that prevented my carrying on my back the 
print of the corner of the stove for the rest of my 
days was the fact that the combined thicknesses of my 
duffle coat, lumberman's shirt, sweater and heavy 
woollen undershirt were interposed to absorb the heat. 
The duffle coat was the worst sufferer, coming out 
with a bar-sinister branded most of the way through 
its half inch of pressed brown wool. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS 

It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the 
Hanging Glaciers picture. Having ah'eady been out 
much longer than we had expected to be, there were 
left only provisions for two days. Nixon had sug- 
gested making a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh 
supplies, but as the time set by Chester for his arrival 
for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did not 
feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any 
further. If the morrow was fair all would be well; 
if not, the main object of our trip would be defeated. 

By great good luck the clear weather held. There 
was not a cloud hovering above the mountains at day- 
break the following morning, and we got away for 
an early start to make the most of our opportunity. 
Nixon himself had run and cut out the trail to the 
Lake earlier in the summer, but horses had never been 
taken over it. Though it was extremely steep in 
pitches, our maiden passage was marked with few 
difficulties. Much to Nixon's surprise and satisfac- 
tion, only one big deadfall had been thrown down to 
block the way, and our enforced halt here gave Roos 
the opportunity for a very effective "trail shot." He 
also got some striking "back-lighting stuff" at spots 
along the interminable cascade that was tumbling and 
bounding beside the trail. The elevation of our camp 
on the creek was something like six thousand feet, and 

63 



64 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

that of the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers a bit under 
eight thousand. The trail is between three and four 
miles long, and we were rather over two hours in mak- 
ing the climb. There were several halts out of this; 
steady plugging would do it much quicker. 

Timber-line was passed half a mile below the lake, 
the last of the trees being left behind in a wonderful 
little mountain park studded with gnarled pines and 
still bright with late wild flowers. The autumn 
colouring here was a marvellous chromatic revel in 
dull golds and soft, subdued browns — ^the shedding 
tamaracks and the dying meadow grasses. 

Clambering on foot up a steep-sided hillock that 
appeared to be an ancient glacial moraine augmented 
by many slides, we suddenly found ourselves on the 
edge of the high-water level of the lake. The transi- 
tion from the flower-strewn meadow to a region of 
almost Arctic frigidity was practically instantaneous 
— the matter of a half dozen steps. One moment we 
were climbing in a cliff-walled valley, with rocky 
buttresses and pinnacles soaring for thousands of feet 
on either side, and with brown-black gravel and thin- 
ning brown-grey bunch grass under foot and ahead; 
the next, as we gained the crest of the old terminal 
moraine, the landscape opened up with a blinding 
flash and we were gazing at a sparkling emerald lake 
clipped in the embrace of an amphitheatre of glaciers 
and eternal snow, and floating full of icebergs and 
marble-mottled shadows. The "Hanging Glacier" — 
perhaps a mile wide across its face, and rearing a 
solid wall of ice a couple of hundred feet in the sheer 
— closed the further or southeastern end of the lake. 



LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 65 

Behind the glacier was a chff of two thousand feet or 
more in height. It appeared to be ahiiost sohd ice 
and snow, but must have been heavily underlaid with 
native rock to maintain its abruptness as it did. 
Higher still a snow.-cap, bright and smooth as pol- 
ished marble, extended to the crest of the range and 
formed a glittering line against the cobalt of the sky. 
Of all the scenic gems of the North American con- 
tinent, I recall none which is so well entitled to the 
characterization of "unique" as this white-flaming 
little jewel of the high Selkirks. 

The lake was now rapidly receding to its winter 
low-water level, and to reach its brink we had to 
press on across three hundred yards of black boulders 
which were evidently covered in the time of the late 
spring floods. Ordinarily one would have expected 
the worst kind of rough and slippery walking here, 
but, to my great surprise, the great rocks were set as 
solid and as level as a pavement of mosaic. The rea- 
son for this became plain when we approached the 
water, where a flotilla of small icebergs, rising and 
falling to the waves kicked up by the brisk breeze 
drawing down the lake, were steadily thump-thump- 
ing the bottom with dull heavy blows which could be 
felt underfoot a hundred yards away. This natural 
tamping, going on incessantly during the months of 
high-water, was responsible for the surprising smooth- 
ness of the rocky waste uncovered by the winter re- 
cession. The great boulders had literally been ham- 
mered flat. 

The icebergs, which were formed by the cracking 
off of the face of the great glacier filled half of the 



66 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

lake. They varied in size from almost totally sub- 
merged chunks a few feet in diameter to huge floating 
islands of several hundred. They were of the most 
fantastic shapes, especially those which had been 
longest adrift and therefore most exposed to the ca- 
pricious action of the sun. By and large, the effect 
was that of a Gargantuan bowl sprinkled with puffy 
white popcorn. But if one took his time and searched 
carefully enough there were very few things of heaven 
or earth that were not represented in the amazing 
collection. One berg, floating on another, had been 
reduced by the sun to the seeming of a gigantic view 
camera — box, bellows and lens. A number of famous 
groups of statuary were there, but of course very 
much in the rough. "The Thinker" was perhaps the 
best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted to 
do a bit more "finishing" on the glacial cave-man 
humped up on his icy green pedestal. Boos, who had 
never heard of Bodin, said it reminded him of me 
drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His 
facile imagination also discovered something else. He 
had once seen a picture of "Lohengrin's Farewell" 
in a Victrola record price-list, and there was a much 
sun-licked hunk of ice, very near the shore, which sug- 
gested the barge to him, swans and all. I saw the 
barge all right, but the Pegasus of my imagination 
had to have some spurring before he would take the 
"swan" hurdle. 

It was Boos' idea that I should swim off, clamber 
over the side of the barge, lassoo the "near" swan 
with a piece of pack-rope to represent reins, and let 
him shoot me as "Lohengrin." It wouldn't exactly 




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LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 67 

run into the "continuity" of the "sportsman" picture, 
he admitted; but he thought that Chester might use 
it, with a lot of other odds and ends, under some such 
title as "Queer People in Queer Places." The idea 
appealed to me strongly. "Lohengrin's Farewell" had 
always moved me strangely; and here was a chance 
actually to appear in the classic role! "You bet I'll 
do it," I assented readily. "What shall I wear?" 
The "Shining Armour," which we both seemed to 
connect with "Lohengrin," happened to be one of the 
things not brought up in our saddle-bags that morn- 
ing. We were in a hot discussion as to the best manner 
of improvising a helmet and cuirass out of condensed 
milk and sardine tins, when Nixon, asking if we knew 
that the sun only shone about three hours a day in 
that "geesly crack in the hills," dryly opined that we 
should take our pictures of the lake while there was 
plenty of light. That sounded sensible, and we 
started feverishly to hm'ry through with the routine 
grind so as to be free to do proper justice to "Lohen- 
grin." As Fate would have it, however, that which 
was presently revealed to me of the ways of fresh- 
water icebergs quenched effectually my desire to swim 
off and take liberties with the capricious things at 
close quarters. 

After making a number of scenic shots, Roos an- 
nounced that he was ready to go ahead with the "fall- 
ing iceberg" stuff. As it was quite out of the question 
making our way along the base of the cliffs on either 
side of the lake to the face of the glacier in the limited 
time at our disposal, and, moreover, as we had already 
demonstrated the impossibility of making artificial 



68 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

icebergs with "sixty per" dynamite, it became neces- 
sary to improvise something closer at hand. It was 
Roos' idea that a piece of cliff cracked off into the 
lake might produce the effect desired, especially if 
"cut" with discrimination. "Here's the way it goes," 
he explained. "The cracked off rock plunks down 
into the lake right into the middle of a bunch of float- 
ing icebergs. I starts cranking at the splash, and 
with the bergs all rolling about and bumping into 
each other no one can tell but what it was one of them 
that really started it. Then I'll pick you up hopping 
up and down on the bank and registering 'surprise' 
and 'consternation'; and then follow with a close-up 
of you standing on that high rock, looking down on 
the quieting waves with folded arms. Now you reg- 
ister 'relief and finally a sort of 'awed wonder.' Then 
you take a big breath and raise your eyes to the face 
of the glacier. You keep right on registering 'awed 
wonder' (only more intense) and as I fade you out you 
shake your head slowly as if the mighty mysteries of 
Nature were beyond your understanding. Get me? 
They ought to colour the film for that dark blue in the 
laboratory (I could tell 'em just the solution to make 
that ice look cold) , and the sub-title ought to be 'The 
Birth of an Iceberg,' and ..." 

"Jim's the midwife, is he?" I cut in. "Yes, I get 
you. Tell him to uncork some of that 'sixty per' 'Twi- 
light Sleep' of his and I'll stand by for the chris- 
tening." 

After a careful technical examination of the terrain, 
Jim, chief "Powder Monkey," located what he 
thought was a favourable spot for operations and 



LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 69 

started to enlarge a thin crack in the cliff to make it 
take five sticks of dynamite. That was more than 
half of our remaining stock; but Roos was insisting 
on a big iceberg, and plenty of powder was the best 
way to insure success. It must have been the tamping 
that was at the bottom of the trouble, for moss and 
damp earth are hardly solid enough to deflect the 
kick of the dynamite in the desired direction. At any 
rate, although there was a roaring detonation, the 
mighty force released was expended outward rather 
than inward. The face of the cliff hardly shivered, 
and only an inconsiderable trickle of broken rocks 
and sand slid down into the lake. Too sore to take 
more than hostile notice of Nixon's somewhat rough 
and ready little mot about the " 'Birth o' the Iceberg' 
turning out a gcesly miscarriage," Roos clapped the 
cap over his lens, unscrewed the crank and began 
taking his camera off its tripod. That rather hasty 
action was responsible for his missing by a hair what 
I am certain was the greatest opportunity ever pre- 
sented to a moving picture operator to film one of the 
most stupendous of Nature's manifestations. 

The roar of the detonating dynamite reverberated 
for half a minute or more among the cliffs and peaks^ 
and it was just after the last roll had died out that 
a renewed rumble caused me to direct a searching gaze 
to the great wall of ice and snow that towered above 
the farther end of the lake. For an instant I could 
not believe my eyes. It could not be possible that the 
whole mountainside was toppling over! And yet that 
was decidedly the effect at a first glance. From the 
rim of the snow-cap down to the back of the glacier — 



70 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

a mile wide and two thousand feet high — ^there was 
one solid, unbroken Niagara of glittering, coruscant 
ice and snow. Like a curtain strung with diamonds 
and pearls and opals it streamed, while the shower of 
flaming colours was reflected in the quivering waters 
of the lake in fluttering scarves of sun-shot scarlet, in 
tenuous ribbons of lavender, jade and primrose. It 
was only when the last shreds of this marvellous 
banner had ceased to stream (at the end of thirty or 
forty seconds perhaps) that I saw what it was that had 
caused it. The whole hair-poised brink of the great 
snow-cap — sharply jolted, doubtless, by the explosion 
of the dynamite — had cracked away and precipitated 
itself to the glacier level, nearly half a mile below. 
The shock to the latter appeared to have had the effect 
of jarring it sufficiently to crack down great blocks 
all along its face. The glacier had, in fact, been 
shocked into giving birth to a whole litter of real ice- 
bergs where, nearer at hand, we had failed dismally 
in our efforts to incubate even an artificial one. As 
glacial obstetricians it appeared that we still had 
much to learn. 

Roos made a great effort to get his camera set up 
again in time to make it record something of the won- 
derful spectacle. He was just too late, however. 
Only a few thin trickles of snow were streaking the 
face of the cliff when he finally swung his powerful 
tele-photo lens upon it, and even these had ceased be- 
fore he had found his focus. It was no end of a pity. 
I saw several of the great valangas started by the 
Austrian and Italian artillery in the Dolomites, and, 
previous to that, what I had thought were very con- 



LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 71 

siderable slides on Aconcagua and Chimborazi, in the 
Andes, and on Kinchin junga and among the hanging 
ice-fields above the Zoji-la in the Himalayas. But 
any half dozen of the greatest of these would have 
been lost in that mighty avalanche of ice and snow 
that we saw descend above the Lake of the Hanging 
Glaciers. Nixon, with a lifetime spent in the Selkirks 
and Rockies, said he had never seen anything to com- 
pare with it. 

Jim, reporting that he still had three sticks of dyna- 
mite in hand, said he reckoned there might be a better 
chance of starting an "iceberg" on the southern side 
of the lake than on the northern one, where we had 
failed to accomplish anything. The southern slope 
was even more precipitous than the northern, he 
pointed out, and he had his eye on a rock which looked 
as if a charge might turn it over and start it rolling. 
"You never can tell what you may be startin' among 
a bunch o' tiltin' rocks like them 'uns," he said hope- 
fully. Nixon's muttered "That ain't no geesly hooch 
dream" might have meant several things; but I took 
it that he intended to imply that there was too much 
"unstable equilibrium" along that southern shore to 
make it the sort of a place that a neurasthenic would 
seek out for a rest cure. I felt the same way about it, 
only more so; but Roos' disappointment over what 
he had already missed was so keen that neither of us 
had the heart to interpose any objections when he told 
Jim to go ahead and see what he could do. As two 
sticks of dynamite were already promised to Harmon, 
the trick, if it came off, would have to be pulled with 
one. Spitting tobacco juice on the taffy -nKe cylinder 



72 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

for luck, Jim clambered off up the cliff and planted 
it under his "likely rock," Roos meantime setting up 
in a favourable position below. 

Whether Jim's "tobaccanalian libation" had any- 
thing to do with it or not, this time luck was with us. 
The sharp blast kicked Jim's rock up on one ear, 
where it teetered for a second or two indecisively be- 
fore rolling over sidewise and coming down kerplump 
on a huge twenty-ton cube of basalt that no one would 
have thought of moving with a barrel of giant. It 
wasn't so much what the little rock did as the way it 
did it. The big block gave a sort of a quiver, much 
as a man awakening from a doze would stretch his 
arms and yawn, and when it quivered a lot of loose 
stuff slipped away from beneath and just let it go. 
It lumbered along at an easy roll for a bit, and then 
increased its speed and started jumping. Its first 
jump was no more than a nervous little hop that 
served to hurdle it clear of a length of flat ledge that 
reached out to stop its downward progress. A second 
later it had hit its stride, so that when it struck the 
water there had been nothing but rarefied air trying 
to stop it for two hundred feet. Down it went, push- 
ing a column of compressed aqua pura ahead of it 
and sucking a big black hole along in its wake. It 
was when that column of compressed water spouted 
up again and tried to chase its tail down the hole it 
had come out of that things began to happen, for it 
found something like a dozen fat icebergs crowding 
in and trying to insinuate their translucent bulks into 
the same opening. And of course they made a tre- 
mendous fuss about it. When an iceberg found that 



TsamaBS^sss^f^^HM 



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Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 

THE FACE OF THE HANGING GLACIER 




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LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 73 

it couldn't get in standing ujj, it forthwith lay down 
on its side, or even rolled over on its back ; which didn't 
help it in the least after all, for the very good reason 
that all the other icebergs were adopting the same 
tactics. And so Roos, who was cranking steadily all 
the time, got his "Birth of an Iceberg" picture after 
all. 

When the bergs ceased butting their heads off 
against each other Roos shot me in the scenes where I 
registered "consternation," "relief" and "awed won- 
der," and our hard-striven-for Lake of the Hanging 
Glaciers picture was complete. There was just a bit 
of a hitch at the "awed wonder" fade-out, though, but 
that was Roos' fault in trying to introduce a "human 
touch" by trying to make Gordon's dog perch up be- 
side me on the crest of a hatchet-edged rock. The 
pup sat quietly wagging his tail until the moment 
came for me to lift up mine eyes unto the hills and 
increase the tenseness of my "awed wonder" registra- 
tion. Then the altitude began to affect his nerves and 
he started doing figure "8's" back and forth between 
my precariously planted feet. As a natural conse- 
quence, when Roos started in on his "fade-out" I was 
seesawing my arms wildly to maintain my balance, 
talking volubly, and registering — well, what would a 
temperamental movie star be registering while in the 
act of telling a dog and a man what he thought of 
them for their joint responsibility in all but pitching 
him off a twenty-foot-high rock into a vortex of tum- 
bling icebergs? Again (unless this part of the fihn 
has been discreetly cut in the studio before exhibition) 
I beg the indulgence of lip-readers. 



74 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

The lake was deeply shadowed before we were 
finally at liberty to take up again the sartorics of 
"Lohengrin"; but it was not that fact, nor yet the not 
entirely prohibitive difficulty of making shining 
armour out of tin cans, that nipped that classic con- 
ception in the bud. Rather it was the astonishing 
unstable-mindedness displayed by the bergs when im- 
pinged upon from without. Of the hundred or more 
hunks of floating ice within a five-hundred-yard radius 
of the point where our artificial berg had hit the water, 
only a half dozen or so of the brcfadest and flattest 
continued to expose the same profiles they had pre- 
sented before the big splash. Most of the others had 
turned over and over repeatedly, and one, which 
seemed to "hang" in almost perfect balance, continued 
slowly revolving like a patent churn. "Lohengrin's 
Barge," half a mile distant from the heart of the 
"birth splash" and lapped by but the lightest of ex- 
piring waves, was rolling drunkenly to port and star- 
board as though in the trough of the seas of a typhoon. 
It looked ready to turn turtle at a touch, and there 
were too many angular projections on it — especially 
about the "swans" — to make even a man who aspired 
to grand opera care to court lightly the experience of 
tangling himself up In the wreck. 

Descending to the timber-line meadow where the 
horses had been left, we found Harmon had brought 
up his outfit and pitched his tent midway of an en- 
chanting vista framed in green-black pines and golden 
tamaracks, and with a wonderful background for 
"camp shots" both up and down the valley. There he 
was going to make his base, he said, until he found 



LAKE OF HANGING GLACIERS 75 

just the light he wanted on the Lake of the Hanging 
Glaciers. Then he hoped to get at least a negative 
or two that would do something approaching justice 
to so inspiring a subject. And there, working and 
waiting patiently through an almost unbroken succes- 
sion of storms that raged in the high Selkirks for many- 
days, he held on until he got what he wanted. It was 
in that quiet persistent way that hte had been photo- 
graphing the mountains of the Canadian West for 
many years, and it will be in that way that he will 
continue until he shall have attained somewhere near 
to the high goal he has set for his life's work — a com- 
plete photographic record of the Kockies and Sel- 
kirks. It is a privilege to have met an artist who 
works with so fine a spirit, who has set himself so 
high an ideal. A number of Harmon's scenic pictures 
of the mountains where the Columbia takes its rise are 
so much better than the best of my own of the same 
subjects, that I am giving them place in a work which 
it was my original intention to illustrate entirely my- 
self. 

We returned to our camp at the head of Horse 
Thief Creek that night, and set out on our return 
to Windermere the following morning. Save for a 
rather sloppy passage of the main ford, the journey 
was without incident. With light packs, we pushed 
right through to the head of the wagon-road — some- 
thing over thirty miles — the first day. The seventeen 
miles to Invermere we covered in a leisurely fashion, 
reaching the hotel at three in the afternoon of the fol- 
lowing day, Sunday, the twentieth of September. 
Here I found a wire from Chester, stating that it had 



76 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

finally proved impossible for him to get away from 
business, and asking me to go ahead and see the Big 
Bend trip through without him. In the event I de- 
cided to continue on down the river he would be glad 
to have his cameraman accompany me as long as the 
weather and light were favourable for his work. A 
letter with full instructions covering the two pictures 
he desired made had already been dispatched. 



CHAPTER V 

CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 

Chester's instructions respecting the two new pic- 
tures he wanted us to work on came through to Roos 
the day following our return to Windermere. One of 
these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend 
voyage. Essaying again my role of "gentleman-cum- 
sportsman," I was to get off the train at Beavermouth, 
meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off down 
the river. The various things seen and done en 
voyage were to make up the picture. 

In the other picture I was to play the part of a 
young rancher who was farming his hard-won clear- 
ing on the banks of the Columbia near its source. 
With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day 
with a great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it 
occurs to him that the river flowing right by his door 
runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of a pros- 
pector friend, about to push off with a sack of samples 
for the smelter many hundreds of miles below, sug- 
gests a means of making the journey. And so the 
two of them start off down the Columbia. What hap- 
pened to them on their way was to be told in the pic- 
ture. The introductory scenes of this picture were 
to be made somewhere in the vicinity of Windermere, 
but the thread of the story was to be picked up below 
the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was 
over. 

Hunting "location" and rainy weather kept us four 

77 



78 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

or five days in Windermere and vicinity, giving an 
opportunity we otherwise would have missed to meet 
and become acquainted with the always kindly and 
hospitable and often highly distinguished people of 
this beautiful and interesting community. From the 
time of David Thompson, the great astronomer and 
explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered 
there in 1810, down to the present Windermere seems 
always to have attracted the right sort of people. The 
predominant class is what one might call the gentle- 
man-farmer, with the stress perhajis on "gentleman." 
I mean to say, that is, that while a number of them 
have failed of outstanding achievement as farmers, 
there was none that I met who would not have quali- 
fied as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the 
word. Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors, 
there was this fine bond of fellowship between all of 
them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher, more 
wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine 
community of the upper Columbia. 

That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph 
Bruce, I recall with especial affection, as must every 
one of the many who has known the hospitality of 
his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Inver- 
mere. An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of 
the builders of the Canadian Pacific, and as such an 
associate and intimate of Van Home, O'Shaughnessy 
and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to 
accomplishment the most notable piece of railway con- 
struction the world has ever known. In love with the 
West by the time the railway was finished, he built 
him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew — 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 79 

such a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could 
rival — and associated himself with various projects for 
the advancement of the country. At the present time 
he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the rich- 
est silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the 
head of an enterprise which purposes to bring the 
Windermere region to its own among the grandest of 
the playgrounds of North America. 

We made the preliminary scenes for the "farmer" 
picture at a gem of a little mountain ranch in a clear- 
ing to the west of Lake Windermere. Shooting 
through one of his favourite "sylvan frames," Roos 
picked me up violently shocking hay at the end of a 
long narrow field which the labour of a young Scotch 
immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing for- 
est. (As a matter of fact the hay was already in 
shocks when we arrived, and I had to unshock a few 
shocks so as to shock them up again before the camera 
and thus give the impression that this was the last of 
my season's crop.) Then I threw up a couple of 
shocks for him set up at closer range, with more atten- 
tion to "technique." (This latter came easy for me, 
as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my Cali- 
fornia ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I 
stopped work, leaned on my fork and gazed into the 
distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be 
thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished 
picture there would be a "cut-in" of breakers at this 
point.) Then I registered "impatience" and "rest- 
lessness," hardening to "firm resolve." At this junc- 
ture I threw down my fork and strode purposefully 
out of the right side of the picture. (The cabin to 



80 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

which I was supposed to be striding was really on 
my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie 
Median law made it imperative always to exit to 
right") Then we went over to make the cabin shots. 
The owner of the cabin was away at the moment, 
but his young Scotch wife — a bonnie bit of a lass who 
might have been the inspiration for "Annie Laurie" — 
was on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I 
was Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of 
guffawing, as though the idea was absurd. She was 
a good deal disappointed at that, but still very ready 
to help with anything calculated to immortalize her 
wee home by emblazoning it on the imperishable cel- 
luloid. First I strode into the cabin, but almost im- 
mediately to emerge unfolding a map. Going over 
to a convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a 
considerable footage of "intent study." Then we 
made a close-up of the map — the Pacific Northwest 
— with my index finger starting at Windermere and 
tracing the course of the Columbia on its long winding 
way to the sea. That proved that there was water 
transit all the way to that previous cut-in of breakers 
which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before 
I threw down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the 
nearby river (which was really Lake Windermere, a 
mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full 
height, registering "discovery." What I was sup- 
posed to see was a prospector tinkering with his boat. 
As this latter scene could not be made until we had 
bought a boat and signed up a "prospector," all that 
was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from 
the cabin on the way to discuss ways and means with 








OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH {above) 

MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON 
THE COLUMBIA (beloiv) 




< 

m 

W « 

H O 







CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 81 

my mythical companion, and then striding back, get- 
ting my roll of blankets and exiting in a final fade- 
out. As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets 
for this shot, we had to improvise one from such ma- 
terial as was available. I forget all that went to make 
up that fearful and wonderful package; but it is just 
as well the precariously-roped bundle didn't resolve 
into its component parts until the fade-out was pretty 
nearly complete. 

Roos tried hard to introduce "human interest" and 
"heart appeal" by staging a farewell scene with "wife 
and child," both of which were ready to hand. I was 
adamant, however, even when he agreed to compro- 
mise by leaving out the child. He was rather stub- 
born about it, refusing to admit the validity of my 
argument to the effect that a would-be screen hero 
who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sym- 
pathies of the crowd at the outset. Finally it was 
decided for us. "It's too late noo," cooed a wee voice 
in which I thought I detected both reproach and re- 
lief; "while ye're talkin', yon cooms Jock." 

It was too late all right; even Roos was ready to 
grant that. Jock was about six-feet-three, and built 
in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I thought. At 
least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when 
he discovered that I had wrapped up his own and 
another nicht-goon in my hastily assembled blanket- 
roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think what might 
have happened had he surprised that farewell scene, 
especially as Roos — with his Mack Sennett training 
and D. W. Griffith ideals — would have tried to stage 
it. 



82 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Roos was young and experienced, and lacking in 
both finesse and subtlety. I granted that this wouldn't 
have cramped his style much in doing "old home town 
stuff;" but farther afield it was electric with danger- 
ous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted 
to him what Kipling's hero in "The Man Who Would 
Be King" said on the subject, paraphrasing it slightly 
so he would understand. "A man has no business 
shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in for- 
eign parts be he three times a crowned movie director," 
was the way I put it. 

It was my original intention to start the boating 
part of my Columbia trip from Golden, at the head 
of the Big Bend, the point at which the calm open 
reaches of the upper river give way to really swift 
water. The decision to make the push-off from Beav- 
ermouth, twenty-nine miles farther down, was come 
to merely because it was much easier to get the boat 
into the water at the latter point. There was little 
swift-water boating worthy of the name above Beaver- 
mouth. Donald Canyon was about the only rough 
water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be 
mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids 
farther down the Bend. In the ninety miles between 
the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden there were 
but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river 
was hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, 
with a current of from one to four miles an hour. Be- 
tween Columbia Lake — practically the head of the 
main channel of the river — and Mud Lake, and be- 
tween the latter and the head of Lake Windermere, 
there was a stream of fairly swift current, but at this 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 83 

time of year not carrying enough water to permit the 
passage of even a canoe without much hning and 
portaging. 

From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite 
content with the plan to start my voyage from Beaver- 
mouth. For the sake of sentiment, however, I did 
want to make some kind of a push-off from the very 
highest point that offered sufficient water to float a 
boat at the end of September. This, I was assured 
in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the 
head of Columbia Lake and immediately below 
the abandoned locks which at one time made naviga- 
tion possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia. 
Although these crude log-built locks have never been 
restored since they were damaged by a great freshet 
in the nineties, and although the traffic they passed 
in the few years of their operation was almost 
negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief de- 
scription of the remarkable terrain that made their 
construction possible by the simplest of engineering 
work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls 
of earth effected the practical insulation of the whole 
great range of the Selkirks. 

As a consequence of recent geological study, it has 
been definitely established that the divide between the 
Columbia and Kootenay rivers, now at Canal Flats, 
was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther north, 
or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. 
That is to say, a great wall of rock at the latter point 
backed up a long, narrow lake between the Rockies 
on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake, 
unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its 



84 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

waters were sufficiently above the lower southern bar- 
riers to give it drainage in that direction. At that 
time it was doubtless the main source of the Kootenay 
River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until 
after a long and devious southerly course into what is 
now Montana, thence northward into Kootenay Lake, 
and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge, into a much- 
extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried 
away the dyke at Donald provided a northward drain- 
age for the lake, and the divide was ultimately estab- 
lished at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a 
shifting and precarious division, however, for the 
Kootenay — which rises some distance to the north- 
ward in the Rockies and is here a sizable stream — dis- 
charged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin 
at high water. It was this latter fact which called 
attention to the comparative ease with which naviga- 
tion could be established between the two rivers by 
means of a canal. For an account of how this canal 
came to be built I am indebted to E. ]M. Sandilands, 
Esq., Mining Recorder for the British Columbia Gov- 
ernment at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, 
to use his own language, "the person who made the 
Selkirk Mts. an Island by connecting the Columbia 
and Kootenay rivers." 

Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex- 
big-game hunter by the name of Baillie-Grohman ob- 
tained, in 1886, a concession from the Provincial 
Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of 
land along the Kootenay River. In return for this 
he was to construct at his own expense a canal con- 
necting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 85 

was for the ostensible purpose of opening up navi- 
gation between the two streams, but as nothing was 
stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the 
obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the 
construction of the canal and locks. "For this rea- 
son," writes Mr. Sandilands, who was working on the 
job at the time, "our 'Grand Canal' was practically 
useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with 
due form and pomp, engineer, contractor and con- 
cessionaire paddling up to the lock in a canoe weU 
laden with the 'good cheer' demanded by such an 
occasion. I was driving a team attached to a 'slush- 
scraper,' and together with a jovial Irish spirit who 
rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was or- 
dered by the foreman to scrape out the false dam 
holding the Kootenay back from the canal. This we 
did as long as we dared. Then I was deputed, with 
gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was 
left of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into 
the canal and the Columbia. This being done, the 
fact was wired to the Provincial Government at Vic- 
toria . . . , and the promised concession of land was 
asked for and granted. I little thought at the time," 
Mr. Sandilands concludes, "how distinguished a part 
I was playing, that I was making the Selkirk Moun- 
tains an 'Island,' a fact which few people realize to 
this day." 

Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by 
dint of much "capstaning," a shallow-draught stern- 
wheeler was worked up to and through the lock and 
canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings, Mon- 
tana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who per- 



86 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

formed this remarkable feat, only to lose the historic 
little craft later in one of the treacherous canyons of 
the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after 
maintaining an intermittent service between the Co- 
lumbia and Kootenay for a number of years, of being 
the captain and owner of the last boat to make that 
amazing passage. 

We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty -mile 
auto-ride from Invermere. Traces of the old dredged 
channel were still visible running up from the head of 
Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against 
a caving wall of logs which must at one time have 
been a gate of the inter-river lock. Out of the tan- 
gle of maiden hair fern which draped the rotting logs 
came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from 
the other side of the divide. This was what was popu- 
larly called the source of the Columbia. I could just 
manage to scoop the river dry with a quick sweep of 
my cupped palm. 

A hundred yards below the source the old channel 
opened out into a quiet currentless pool, and here I 
found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to a neigh- 
bouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg 
of my voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather 
faster than I could bail, but even at that it floated as 
long as there was water to float it. Fifty yards far- 
ther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all 
the way across, and in attempting to drag the old 
canoe out for the portage, I pulled it in two amid- 
ships. I had made my start from almost chock-a- 
block against the source, however. Sentiment was 
satisfied. I was now ready for the Bend. Groping 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 87 

my way back to the car through an almost impenetra- 
ble pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we re- 
turned to Invermere. 

A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still 
be several days before his boat was ready for the Bend 
offered us a chance to make the journey to Golden by 
river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the 
boating side, but Roos thought there might 
be a chance for some effective scenic shots. I, 
also, was rather inclined to favour the trip, for the 
chance it would give of hardening up my hands and 
pulling muscles before tackling the Bend. An un- 
propitious coincidence in the matter of an Indian name 
defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out on 
Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph 
Bruce had kindly volunteered to let us have for the 
quiet run down to Golden. "By hard pulling," I 
said, "we ouglit just about to make Spillimacheen at 
the end of the first day." "Spill a what?" ejaculated 
Roos anxiously; "you didn't say 'machine,' did you?" 
"Yes; Spillimacheen," I replied. "It's the name of a 
river that flows down to the Columbia from the Sel- 
kirks." "Then that settles it for me," he said deci- 
sively. "I don't want to spill my machine. It cost 
fifteen hundred dollars. I'm not superstitious; but, 
just the same, starting out for a place with a name 
like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit 
yours truly." And so we went down to Golden by 
train and put in the extra time outfitting for the Bend. 

Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse 
comes tumbling down to join the Columbia, is a typi- 
cal Western mining and lumbering town. Save for 



88 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big 
Bend, the people are delightful. It is true that the 
hospitable spirit of one Goldenite did get me in rather 
bad; but perhaps the fault was more mine than his. 
Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was 
about to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great en- 
thusiasm of his garden, and said that he feared some of 
his fine strawberries might be going to waste in his ab- 
sence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with 
eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly — and 
truthfully — that I would willingly ^eal to get straw- 
berries and cream, provided, of course, that they 
couldn't be acquired in some more conventional way. 
He hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn't 
be necessary to go outside the law in this case. "The 
first chance you get," he said with a twinkle in his eye, 
"just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and 
tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and 
cream, and I have no doubt she'll provide for you." 

If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to 
pull out just then, perhaps he would have explained 
that that accursed "love stuff" formula was a figure 
of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would un- 
derstand it that way, if not at once, at least when the 
time came. And I would have, ordinarily. But my 
strawberry-and-cream appetite is so overpowering 
that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer psycho- 
logical instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. 
That was why I blurted out my hospitable friend's 
directions almost verbatim when I saw that the door 
of his home (to which I had rushed at my first oppor- 
tunity) had been opened by a female. It was only 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 89 

after I had spoken that I saw that she was lean, an- 
gular, giinlet-eyed, and had hatred of all malekind 
indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew 
in her breath whistlingly ; then controlled herself with 
an effort. "I suppose I must give you the berries and 
cream," she said slowly and deliberately, the clearly 
enunciated words falling icily like the drip from the 
glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; "but the 
— the other matter you would find a little difficult." 

"Ye-es, ma'am," I quavered shiveringly, "I would. 
If you'll please send the strawberries and cream to 
the hotel I am quite content to have it a cash transac- 
tion." 

Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured 
me through and through, I felt that I deserved no 
little credit for sticking to my guns in the matter of 
the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was 
floored. The next time any one tries to send me into 
the Hesperides after free fruit I am going to know 
who is guarding the apples ; and I am 7iot going to 
approach the delectable garden by the love-path. 

I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he 
would have to expect from Golden in the matter of 
warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite of all, that 
garrulous social centre, the town poolroom, did man- 
age to slip one rather good one over on him before we 
got away. "How long does it take to go round the 
Bend?" he had asked of a circle of trappers and 
lumber- jacks who were busily engaged in their fa- 
vourite winter indoor-sport of decorating the pool- 
room stove with a frieze of tobacco juice. "Figger it 
fer yerself, sonny," replied a corpulent woodsman 



90 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

with a bandaged jaw. "If yer gets inter yer boat an' 
lets it go in that ten-twent'-thirt' mile current, it's a 
simpl' problum of 'rithmatick. If yer ain't dished in 
a souse-hole, yer has ter make Revelstoke insider one 
day. As yer has ter do sum linin' to keep right side 
up, it's sum slower. Best time any of us makes it in 
is two days. But we never rushes it even like that 
'nless we're hurryin' the cor'ner down ter sit on sum 
drownded body." 

As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence 
to this, and as none had cracked anything remotely 
resembling a smile. Boos was considerably impressed 
— not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time 
I heard that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great 
comfort in the hotel proprietor's really well-meant 
attempt at reassurance. "Don't let that story bother 
you, my boy," the genial McConnell had said; "they 
never did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact 
is, there never was a coroner here that had the guts to 
tackle it!" 

We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon 
~of the twenty-eighth of September. He reported 
that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by 
that morning's way freight, and should arrive the 
following day. As I had been unable to engage a 
boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had found 
only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to 
give me an oar and a pike-pole and make out the best 
we could without another man. I had brought pro- 
visions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and 
Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the ef- 
forts of influential friends in Golden I had also been 



CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH 91 

able to secure two bottles of prime Demerara rum. 
Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one 
cask of Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, 
I had not been very keen about bothering with the 
rum. But on the assurance that it might well be two 
or three days before any whisky was found, and that 
getting wet in the Columbia without something to 
restore the circulation was as good as suicide, I al- 
lowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful 
stuff — thirty per cent, over-proof; which means that 
it could be diluted with four parts of water and still 
retain enough potency to make an ordinary man blink 
if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man — but he 
was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will 
tell about "Wild Bill" in the proper place. 

There was a wonderful aurora borealis that night — 
quite the finest display of the kind I recall ever having 
seen in either the northern or southern hemispheres. 
Blackmore — weather-wise from long experience — re- 
garded the marvellous display of lambently licking 
light streamers with mixed feelings. "Yes, it's a fine 
show," he said, following the opalescent glimmer of 
the fluttering pennants with a dubious eye; "but I'm 
afraid we'll have to pay through the nose for it. It 
means that in a couple of days more the rain will be 
streaming down as fast as those lights are streaming 
up. Just about the time we get well into Surprise 
Rapids there will be about as much water in the air 
as in the river. However, it won't matter much," he 
concluded philosophically, "for we'll be soaked any- 
way, whether we're running or lining, and rain water's 
ten degrees warmer than river water." 



CHAPTER VI 

I. RUNNING THE BEND 

Through Surprise Rapids 

We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o'clock 
of the afternoon of September twenty-ninth. We had 
hoped for an early start, but the ^ratically running 
local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did not 
arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory 
shots had already been made. Made up momentarily 
as a gentleman — wearing an ankle length polished 
waterproof and a clean cap, that is, — I jumped the 
westbound Limited as it slowed down on entering the 
yard, dropping off presently at the platform with a 
"here-I-am" expression when Roos signalled that the 
focus was right. Then I shook hands with the wait- 
ing Blackmore, and together we strode to the door of 
the station and met the previously-rehearsed agent. 
(Roos had wanted me to shake hands with the agent 
as well as with Blackmore, but I overruled him by 
pointing out that I was a "gentleman-sportsman" not 
a "gentleman-politician," and served notice on him 
that pump-handling must henceforth be reduced to a 
minimum.) We tried to perfect the agent in a 
sweeping gesture that would say as plainly as words 
"The train with your boat is just around that next 
bend, sir," but somehow we couldn't prevent his try- 
ing to elevate his lowly part. His lips mumbled 

92 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 93 

the words we had put on them all right, but the ges- 
ture was a grandiose thing such as a Chesterfieldian 
footman might have employed in announcing "My 
Lord, the carriage waits." 

Roos, in all innocence, narrowly missed provoking a 
fight with a hot-tempered half-breed while he was set- 
ting up to shoot the incoming freight. He had an in- 
genious method of determining, without bending over 
his finder, just what his lens was going to "pick-up." 
This consisted of holding his arms at full length, with 
his thumbs placed tip to tip and the forefingers stand- 
ing straight up. The right-angling digits then 
framed for his eye an approximation of his picture. 
To one not used to it this esoteric performance looked 
distinctly queer, especially if he chanced to be stand- 
ing somewhere near the arch priest's line of vision. 
And that, as it happened, was exactly the place from 
which it was revealed to the choleric near-Shuswap 
section hand. I didn't need the breed's subsequent 
contrite explanation to know that, from where he had 
been standing, those twiddling thumbs and fingers, 
through the great fore-shortening of the arms, looked 
to be right on the end of the nose of the grimacing 
little man by the camera. Not even a self-respecting 
white man would have stood for what that twiddling 
connoted, let alone a man in whose veins flowed blood 
that must have been something like fifteen-sixteenths 
of the proudest of Canadian strains. Luckily, both 
Blackmore and his burly boatman were men of action. 
Even so, it was a near squeeze for both camera and 
cameraman. Rdos emerged unscarred in anything 
but temperament. And, of course, as every one even 



94 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

on the fringes of the movies knows, the tempera- 
ments of both stars and directors are things that re- 
quire frequent harrowing to keep them in good work- 
ing order. 

Roos' filming of the unloading of the boat was the 
best thing he did on the trip. Every available man in 
Beavermouth was requisitioned. This must have been 
something like twenty-five or thirty. A half dozen, 
with skids and rollers, could have taken the boat off 
without exerting themselves seriously, but could 
hardly have "made it snappy." And action was what 
the scene demanded. There was no time for a re- 
hearsal. The agent simply told us where the car 
would be shunted to, Blackmore figured out the best 
line from there over the embankment and through the 
woods to the river, and Roos undertook to keep up 
with the procession with his camera. Blackmore was 
to superintend the technical operation and I was or- 
dered to see that the men "acted natural." And thus 
we went to it. The big boat, which must have weighed 
close to half a ton, came off its flat car like a paper 
shallop, but the resounding thwack with which her 
bows hit a switch-frog awakened Blackmore's con- 
cern. "Easy! Easy! Don't bust her bottom," he 
began shouting; while I, on the other side, took up 
my refrain of "Don't look at the camera! — make it 
snappy." The consequence of these diametrically op- 
posed orders was that the dozen or more men on my 
side did most of the work. But even so it was 
"snappy" — very. 

Down the embankment we rushed like a speeding 
centipede, straight at the fine hog-proof wire fence of 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 95 

the C. P. R. right-of-way. That fence may have been 
hog-proof, but it was certainly not proof against the 
charge of a thirty-foot boat coming down a fifty per 
cent, grade pushed by twenty-five men. We had in- 
tended lifting over it, but our momentum was too 
great, especially after I had failed to desist from 
shouting "Make it snappy!" soon enough. The bar- 
rier gave way in two or three places, so that we were 
shedding trailing lengths of wire all the way to the 
river. On through the woods we juggernauted, Roos 
following in full cry. His city "news stuff" training 
was standing him in good stead, and he showed no 
less cleverness than agility in making successive "set- 
ups" without staying our progress. Only in the last 
fifty yards, where the going over the moss and pine 
needles was (comparatively speaking) lightning fast, 
did we distance him. Here, as there was plenty of 
time, he cut a hole in the trees and shot the launching 
through one of his favourite "sylvan frames." For 
the push-off shot he provided his customary heart 
throb by bringing down the station agent's three- 
year-old infant to wave farewell. That he didn't try 
to feature the mother prominently seemed to indicate 
that what I had said at Windermere on the subject 
had had some effect. 

After the "farewell" had been filmed, we landed at 
the fire ranger's cabin to pick up Roos and his camera. 
The ranger told us that a couple of trappers who had 
been for some weeks engaged in portaging their win- 
ter supplies round Surprise Rapids would be waiting 
for us at the head of the first fall in the expectation of 
getting the job of packing our stuff down to the foot. 



96 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"Nothing doing," Blackmore replied decisively; 
"going straight through." The ranger grinned and 
shook his grizzled head. "You're the man to do it," 
he said; "but jest the same, I'm glad it's you and not 
me that has the job." 

The station agent came down with Roos, evidently 
with the cheering purpose of showing us the place 
where his predecessor and a couple of other men had 
been drowned in attempting to cross the river some 
months previously. "Only man in the boat to be 
picked up alive was a one-armed chap," he concluded 
impressively. "Too late now for operations on any of 
this crew," laughed Blackmore, pushing off with a 
pike-pole. "Besides, every man jack of us is going 
to have a two-arm job all the way." To the parting 
cheers of the mackinawed mob on the bank, he eased 
out into the current and headed her down the Bend. 

Roos stationed himself in the bow, with camera set 
up on its shortened tripod, waiting to surprise any 
scenery caught lurking along the way. Blackmore 
steered from the stern with his seven-feet-long birch 
paddle. Andy Kitson and I, pulling starboard and 
port oars respectively, rubbed shoulders on the broad 
'midship's thwart. Our outfit — a comparatively light 
load for so large a boat — was stowed pretty well aft. 
I saw Blackmore lean out to "con ship" as we got 
under way. "Good trim," he pronounced finally, 
with an approving nod. "Just load enough to steady 
her, and yet leave plenty of freeboard for the sloppy 
water. This ought to be a dryer run than some the 
old girl's had. I chuckled to myself over that "dryer.'* 
I hadn't told Blackmore yet what was hidden down 




ARRIVAL OF OUR HUAT AT HEAVEKMOUTH (above) 
OUR FIRST CAMP AT BEAVERMOUTH (centre) 
THE REMAINS OF A SUNKEN FOREST (beloiv) 




TRAPPER'S CABIN WHERE WE FOUND SHELTER FOR THE 

NIGHT {above) 

WHERE WE LANDED ABOVE SURPRISE RAPIDS (centre) 
WHERE WE TIED UP AT "EIGHT MILE" (below) 



II 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 97 

Canoe River way. I had promised Captain Arm- 
strong not to do so until I had ascertained that we had 
a teetotal crew — or one comparatively so. 

Andy Kitson was a big husky North-of-Irelander, 
who had spent twenty years trapping, packing, hunt- 
ing, lumbering and boating in western Canada. Like 
the best of his kind, he was deliberate and sparing of 
speech most of the time, but with a fine reserve vo- 
cabulary for emergency use. Pie was careful and 
cautious, as all good river boatmen should be, but 
decidedly "all there" in a pinch. He pulled a good 
round-armed thumping stroke w^ith his big oar, and 
took to the water (as has to be done so frequently on 
a bad stretch of "lining down") like a beaver. Best 
of all, he had a temper which nothing from a leak in 
the tent dribbling down his neck to a half hour up to 
his waist in ice-cold water seemed equal to ruffling. I 
liked Andy the moment I set eyes on his shining red 
gill, and I liked him better and better every day I 
worked and camped with him. 

As it was three-thirty when we finally pushed off, 
Blackmore announced that he would not try to make 
farther than "Eight-Mile" that afternoon. With com- , 
paratively good water all the way to the head of Sur- 
prise Rapids, we could have run right on through, he 
said; but that would force us to make camp after 
dark, and he disliked doing that unless he had to. In 
a current varying from three to eight miles an hour, 
we slid along down stream between banks golden-gay 
with the turning leaves of poplar, cottonwood and 
birch, the bright colours of which were strikingly ac- 
centuated by the sombre background of thick-growing 



98 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

spruce, hemlock, balsam and fir. Yellow, In a score 
of shades, was the prevailing colour, but here and 
there was a splash of glowing crimson from a patch of 
chin-chinick or Indian tobacco, or a mass of dull ma- 
roon where a wild rose clambered over the thicket. 
Closely confined between the Rockies to the right and 
the Selkirks to the west, the river held undeviatingly 
to its general northwesterly course, with only the 
patchiest of flats on either side. And this was the 
openest part of the Bend, Blackmore volunteered; 
from the head of Surprise Rapids to the foot of Priest 
Rapids the Columbia was so steeply walled that we 
would not find room for a clearing large enough to 
support a single cow. "It's a dismal hole, and no 
mistake," he said. 

We took about an hour to run to "Eight Mile," 
Andy and I pulling steadily all the way in the deep, 
smoothly-running current. We tied up in a quiet 
lagoon opening out to the west — evidently the mouth 
of a high-water channel. There was a magnificent 
stand of fir and spruce on a low bench running back 
from the river, not of great size on account of growing 
so thickly, but amazing lofty and straight. We 
camped in the shelter of the timber without pitching 
a tent, Andy and Blackmore sleeping in the open and 
Roos and I in a tumble-down trapper's cabin. Or 
rather we spread our blankets in the infernal hole. 
As the place was both damp and rat-infested, we did 
not sleep. Roos spent the night chopping wood and 
feeding the rust-eaten — and therefore smoky — sheet- 
iron stove. I divided my time between growling at 
Roos for enticing me into keeping him company in the 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 99 

cabin against Blackmore's advice, and throwing things 
at the prowling rodents. It did not make for increased 
cheerfuhiess when I hit him on the ear with a hob- 
nailed boot that I had intended for a pair of eyes 
gleaming vitreously on a line about six inches back of 
his gloomily bowed head. He argued — and with some 
reason I must admit — that I had no call to draw so 
fine a bead until I was surer of my aim. Largely as 
a point of repartee, I told him not to be too certain I 
was not sure of my aim. But I really had been trying 
to hit the rat. . . . 

I took the temperature of the air and the river 
water in the morning, finding the former to register 
thirty-eight degrees and the latter forty-one. There 
was a heavy mist resting on the river for a couple of 
hours after daybreak, but it was lifting by the time 
we were ready to push off. In running swift water 
good visibility is even more imperative than at sea, 
but as there was nothing immediately ahead to bother 
Blackmore did not wait for it to clear completely. 
The sun was shining brightly by nine-thirty, and Roos 
made several shots from the boat and one or two from 
the bank. One of the most remarkable sights un- 
folded to us was that of "Snag Town." Just what 
was responsible for this queer maze of up-ended trees 
it would be hard to say. It seems probable, however, 
that a series of heavy spring floods undermined a con- 
siderable flat at the bend of the river, carrying away 
the earth and leaving the trees still partially rooted. 
The broadening of the channel must have slowed 
down the current a good deal, and it appears never to 
have been strong enough to scour out below the te- 



100 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

naciously clinging roots. The former lords of the 
forest are all dead, of course, but still they keep their 
places, inclining downstream perhaps twenty-degrees 
from their former proud perpendicular, and firmly 
anchored. It takes careful steering to thread the 
maze even in a small boat, but the current is hardly 
fast enough to make a collision of serious moment. 

The current quickened for a while beyond "Snag 
Town" and then began slowing again, the river broad- 
ening and deepening meanwhile. I thought I read the 
signs aright and asked Blackmore. '"Yes," he replied 
with a confirmatory nod; "it's the river backing up for 
its big jump. Stop pulling a minute and you can 
probably hear the rapid growling even here." Andy 
and I lay on our oars and listened. There it was 
surely enough, deep and distant but unmistakable — 
the old familiar drum-roll of a big river beating for the 
charge. It was tremendous music — heavy, air-quiv- 
ering, earth-shaking; more the diapason of a great 
cataract than an ordinary rapid, it seemed to me. I 
was right. Surprise is anything but an ordinary 
rapid. 

We pulled for a half hour or more down a broad 
stretch of slackening water that was more like a lake 
than a river. Out of the looming shadows of the 
banks for a space, mountain heights that had been cut 
off leaped boldly into view, and to left and right lifted 
a lofty sky-line notched with snowy peaks rising from 
corrugated fields of bottle-green glacier ice. Mt. 
Sanford, loftiest of the Selkirks, closed the end of the 
bosky perspective of Gold Creek, and the coldly 
chiselled pyramids of Lyell, Bryce and Columbia 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 101 

pricked out the high points on the Continental Di- 
vide of the Rockies. We held the vivid double pano- 
rama — or quadruple, really, for both ranges were 
reflected in the quiet water — for as long as it took us 
to pull to a beach at the narrowing lower end of the 
long lake-like stretch above the rapids, finally to lose 
it as suddenly as it had been opened to us behind the 
imminently-rearing river walls. 

The two trappers of whom the fire-ranger at 
Beavermouth had spoken were waiting for us on the 
bank. They had permits for trapping on a couple of 
the creeks below Kinbasket Lake, and were getting 
down early in order to lay out their lines bj^ the time 
the season opened a month or so hence. They had 
been packing their stuff over the three-mile portage 
to the foot of the rapids during the last three weeks, 
and now, with nothing left to go but their canoes, 
were free to give us a hand if we wanted them. Black- 
more replied that he could save time and la'bour by 
running and hning the rapids. "Besides," he added 
with a grin, "I take it these movie people have come 
out to get pictures of a river trip, not an overland 
journey." The trappers took the dig in good part, 
but one of them riposted neatly. Since he was out for 
furs, he said, and was not taking pictures or boot- 
legging, time was not much of an object. The main 
thing with him was to reach his destination with his 
winter's outfit. If all the river was like Surprise 
Rapids he would be quite content to go overland all 
the way. Neither of them made any comments on the 
stage of the water or offered any suggestions in con- 
nection with the job we had ahead. That was one 



102 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

comfort of travelling with Blackmore. In all matters 
pertaining to river work his judgment appeared to be 
beyond criticism. If he was tackling a stunt with a 
considerable element of risk in it, that was his own 
business. No one else knew the dangers, and how to 
avoid them, so well as he. 

Blackmore looked to the trim of the boat carefully 
before shoving off, putting her down a bit more by the 
stern it seemed to me. He cautioned me on only one 
point as we pulled across the quarter of mile to where 
the banks ran close together and the quiet water 
ended. "Don't never dip deep in the white water, and 
'specially in the swirls," he said, stressing each word. 
"If you do, a whirlpool is more'n likely to carry your 
oar-blade under the boat and tear out half the side 
'fore you can clear your oarlock. That's the way 
that patched gunnel next you came to get smashed." 
As we were about at the point where it is well to con- 
fine all the talking done in the boat to one man, I 
refrained from replying that I had been told the 
same thing in a dozen or so languages, on four differ- 
ent continents, and by "skippers" with black, yellow 
and copper as well as white skins, at fairly frequent 
intervals during the last fifteen years. There were 
enough slips I might make, but that of dipping deep 
in rough water was hardly likely to be one of them. 

The rumble of the rapid grew heavier as we pro- 
ceeded, but only a single flickering white "eyelash" 
revealed the imminent ambush lurking beyond the 
black rocks. The current accelerated rapidly as the 
walls closed in, but ran easily, effortlessly, unrip- 
plingly, and with an almost uncanny absence of swirls 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 103 

and eddies. "Have plenty way on her 'fore she 
hits the suds," cautioned Blackmore, and Andy and I 
grunted in unison as we leaned a few more pounds of 
beef onto our bending spruces. That started our in- 
side elbows to bumping, but without a word each of 
us sidled along an inch or two toward his gunwale to 
get well set while yet there was time. 

With an easy bob — quick like a rowboat rides the 
bow wave of a steamer, but smoother, easier in its lift 
— we ran into the head of the rapid. There was a 
swift V-shaped chute of smooth jade-green water; 
then we slapped right into the "suds." High-headed 
waves slammed against the bows and threw spray all 
over the boat and far astern of it. But they lacked 
jolt. Thej^ had too much froth and not enough 
green water to make them really formidable. We 
were in rough but not really bad water. I tried to 
grin at Blackmore to show him I understood the situ- 
ation and was enjoying it highly; but his eyes, pin- 
points of concentration under bent brows, were di- 
rected over my head and far in advance. Plainly, he 
was thinking as well as looking well ahead. 

Reassured by the smart way we were slashing 
through that first riffle, I ventured to steal a look over 
my shoulder. In the immediate foreground Roos, 
with his waterproof buttoned close around his neck, 
was shaking the spray out of his hair and watching 
for a chance to snap with his kodak. Ahead there was 
perhaps another hundred yards of about the same sort 
of water as that in which we were running; then a 
yeasty welter of white where the river disappeared 
round a black cliff into what seemed a narrow gorge. 



104 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Opposite the cliff the river wall sloped slightly and 
was thickly covered with a dense growth of evergreen. 
The heavy roar we had been hearing for hours was 
still muffled. Evidently the main disturbance was 
somewhere beyond the bend at the cliff. 

The thunder of falling water grew louder as we 
headed down toward the white smother in the em- 
brasure of the bend, and it was from Blackmore's lips 
rather than from any words I heard that I gathered 
that he was calling for "More way]" Still keeping 
fairly good stroke, Andy and I quickly had her going 
enough faster than the current to give the big paddle 
all the steerage "grip" Blackmore could ask for. 
Swinging her sharply to the right, he headed her past 
the out-reaching rock claws at the foot of the cliff, 
and, with a sudden blaze of light and an ear-shatter- 
ing rush of sound we were into the first and worst fall 
of Surprise Rapids. 

That dual onslaught of light and sound had some- 
thing of the paralyzing suddenness of that which oc- 
curs when a furnace door is thrown wide and eye and 
ear are assailed at the same instant with the glare and 
the roar from within. One moment we were running 
in a shadowed gorge with a heavy but deadened and 
apparently distant rumble sounding somewhere 
ahead; the next we were in the heart of a roar that 
fairly scoured our ear-drums, and blinking in a flut- 
tering white light that seemed to sear the eyeballs. 
The one hurried glance that I threw behind me as I 
began floundering on the end of my kicking oar 
photographed an intensely vivid picture on my mem- 
ory. 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 105 

What had been merely a swiftly-flowing river with 
a streak of silver riffles down the middle had changed 
to a tumultuous tumble of cascades that gleamed in 
solid white from bank to bank like the churned snow 
of a freshly descended avalanche. There was no green 
water whatever; not even a streak that was tinged 
with green. All that relieved the coruscating, sun- 
silvered tmiible of whiteness were the black tips of 
jutting bed-rock, sticking up through the foam 
they had churned. The deeply shadowed western 
wall, hanging above the river like a dusky pall, served 
only to accentuate by contrast the intense white light 
that danced above the cascade. It was as though the 
golden yellow had been filtered out of the sunlight in 
the depths, and only the pure blue-white of calcium 
reflected back into the atmosphere. 

Heavy as was the fall of the river over the stretch 
we had now entered, I could just make out a point 
perhaps a half mile farther down where it dropped 
out of sight entirely. That, I told myself, must be 
the place where there was an unbroken reef of bed- 
rock all the way across the stream, and where there 
was an abrupt drop of eight or ten feet. A great 
throbbing rumble cutting into the slightly higher- 
keyed roar that already engulfed us also seemed to 
indicate that the steepest pitch had not yet been 
reached. I had, of course, seen worse water than this, 
but certainly had never (as appeared to be the case 
now) been irretrievably committed to running it. I 
had heard that it was quite unrunnable in any kind 
of a boat, it certainly looked unrunnable, and I seemed 
to have the impression that Blackmore had said he 



106 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was not intending to run it. Yet here we were into 
it, and without (so far as I could see) anything to do 
but drive ahead. However, that was Blackmore's 
affair. . . . 

The rather smart team-work which Andy and I had 
maintained for a while dissolved like the morning 
mists as we banged in among the walloping rollers at 
the head of the real cascade. Both of us were in dif- 
ficulties, but his round-armed thumping stroke 
seemed rather more true to form than the shattered 
remnants of my fine straight-armed s-lide-and-recover, 
with its dainty surface-skimming "feather." Noth- 
ing but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can 
get any hold in a current of fifteen to twenty miles an 
hour, and the short, wristy pull (which is all there is 
time for) doesn't impart a lot of impulse to a thirty- 
foot boat. That, and the staggering buffets on the 
bows, for it was solid, lumpy water that was coming 
over us now, quickly reduced our headway. (Head- 
way through the current, I mean; our headway float- 
ing 171 the current was terrific.) This was, of course, a 
serious handicap to Blackmore, as it deprived him of 
much of the steerage-way upon which he was depend- 
ent for quick handling of the boat. The difficulty of 
maintaining steerage-way in rough water with oars 
makes a bow as well as a stern paddle very desirable in 
running bad rapids. The bow paddler can keep a 
very sharp lookout for rocks immediately ahead, and, 
in a pinch, can jerk the boat bodily to one side or the 
other, where oarsmen have to swing it. However, 
Blackmore knew just what he was going up against, 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 107 

and had made the best disposition possible of his 
available crew. 

I was too busy keeping myself from being bucked 
off the thwart by my floundering oar to steal more 
than that first hurried look over my shoulder. It was 
not my concern what was ahead anyway. All I had 
to do was to take a slap at the top of a wave every time 
I saw a chance, and be ready to back, or throw my 
weight into a heavy stroke, when Blackmore needed 
help to turn her this way or that. My signal — a jerk 
of the steersman's head to the left — came sooner than 
I expected. It looked a sheer impossibility to drive 
through the maze of rocks to the bank, yet that — 
after a long, anxious look ahead — was evidently what 
he had decided to attempt. As it was my oar he called 
on, I knew it was the right or east bank, a sharply 
sloping reach of black bedrock littered with water- 
scoured boulders. 

By the way Blackmore wasdeaning onto his paddle 
I knew that he needed all the pull I could give him 
to bring her round. Swinging back hard, I threw 
every pound I had onto my oar. For an instant the 
lack of resistance as the blade tore through foam 
nearly sent me reeling backwards; then it bit into 
solid water, and, under impulse of oar and paddle, the 
boat pivoted through more than half a quadrant and 
shot straight for the bank. Right in where the black 
rock tips were scattered like the raisins in a pudding 
he headed her. There was no room to use the oars 
now, but she still carried more than enough way to 
send her to the bank. Or rather, it would have carried 



108 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

her through if the course had been clear. Missing two 
or three rocks by inches, she rasped half her length 
along another, and onto a fourth — lurking submerged 
by a foot — she jammed full tilt. It was her port bow 
that struck, and from the crash it seemed impossible 
that she could have escaped holing. Andy went over 
the side so suddenly that, until I saw him balancing on 
a rock and trying to keep the boat from backing off 
into the current, I thought he had been thrown over- 
board by the impact. Thumping her bow with his 
boot, he reported her leaking slightly but not much 
damaged. Then, swinging her round into an eddy, 
he jumped off into the waist-deep water and led her 
unresistingly up against the bank. It was astonishing 
to see so wild a creature so suddenly become tame. 

We would have to "line down" from here to the 
foot of the first fall, Blackmore said. While Roos was 
setting up his camera the veteran explained that he 
could have run four or five hundred yards farther 
down, right to the brink of the "tip off," but that he 
preferred getting in out of the wet where he had a 
good landing. I agreed with him heartily — without 
putting it in words. But if that was his idea of a 
"good landing place," I hoped he would continue to 
avoid bad ones. 

The basic principles of "lining down" are the same 
on all rivers. Where water is too rough to run, it is 
the last resort before portaging. As generally prac- 
tised, one man, walking along the bank, lets the boat 
down with a line, while another — or as many others 
as are available — keeps it off the rocks with poles. 
"Lining" can be effected more rapidly and with much 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 109 

less effort if one man remains in the boat and fends off 
with his pole from there. This is much the better 
method where the fall is not too great and the water 
comparatively warm. On the upper Columbia, where 
the breaking away of a boat from a line means its 
almost inevitable loss with all on board, it is resorted 
to only when absolutely necessary, and when a man 
of great experience is handling the line. It takes a 
natural aptitude and years of experience for a man to 
master all the intricacies of "lining." I shall not en- 
deavour to enumerate even the few that I am familiar 
with; but the one thing beyond all others to avoid is 
letting the bow of the boat swing outwards when the 
stern is held up by a rock. This brings the full cur- 
rent of the river against its up-stream side, exerting a 
force that a dozen men could not hold against, let 
alone one or two. As Blackmore was noted for his 
mastery of the "lining" game, however, we had no 
apprehension of trouble in this department. 

Nothing of the outfit save the moving picture cam- 
era was removed from the boat at this juncture. Coil- 
ing his line — something over a hundred feet of half- 
inch Manila hemp — over his left arm, Blackmore 
signalled Andy to shove off. Paying out the line 
through his right hand, he let the eddy carry the boat 
out into the drag of the current. Armed with long 
pike-poles, Andy and I ran on ahead to keep it clear 
of the banks as it swung in. This was easy enough 
as long as we had only the bank to contend with. 
But almost immediately the trouble which makes 
Surprise Rapids one of the nastiest stretches on any 
river in the world to line began to develop. This 



110 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

came from the submerged rocks which crop up all 
along between the banks and the deeper water of 
mid-channel. 

Pulling her up and releasing her with a hand that 
reminded me of that of a consummate natural horse- 
man, Blackmore nursed the boat along and managed 
to avoid most of these obstructions. But every now 
and then she would wedge between a close-set pair 
of boulders and resist the force of the current to drive 
her on. At such times it was up to Andy and me to 
wade in and try to dislodge her with^our poles. Fail- 
ing this, we had to wade out still farther and lift 
her through. Andy always took the lead in this lift- 
ing business, claiming that it required a lot of experi- 
ence to know just the instant to stop shoving at the 
boat as she began to move, and start bracing against 
the current to keep from getting carried away. I 
have no doubt he was right. In any event he would 
never let me come out until he had tugged and hauled 
for several minutes trying to budge her alone, and 
even then — notwithstanding his four or five inches 
less of height — he always took his station in the deep- 
est hole. Two or three times, shaking himself like a 
Newfoundland, he came out wet to the armpits with 
the icy water. As the sun was beating hotly upon 
the rocks, however, neither of us felt the cold much 
that afternoon. A few days later it was another story. 

We made something like eight or nine hundred 
yards before we stopped — right to the head of the 
roaring chute that ran down to the sheer drop-otf. 
Roos — always at his best when there was plenty of 
unpremeditated action going on, so that "directorial" 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 111 

worries sat lightly on him — folloAved us closely all the 
way. It was hard enough keeping one's footing on 
those ice-slippery boulders at all ; how he managed it 
with something like a hundred pounds of camera and 
tripod over his shoulder and a bulky case in one hand 
is more than I can figure. But he did it, keeping 
close enough so that he got just about everything 
without having to ask us to do it over again. This 
latter was a good deal of a comfort, especially in 
those waist-deep-in-the-Columbia lifting stunts. I 
had always hated "lining down," even in the tropics, 
and I already saw that what we had ahead wasn't 
going to modify my feelings for the better. 

At the head of that rough-and-tumble cascade lead- 
ing to the fall, Blackmore decided that we would have 
to unload the boat completely before trying to let her 
down. It was always bad business there at the best, he 
said, and the present stage of water made the rocks 
quite a bit worse than when either higher or lower. 
If we hustled, there ought to be time to get through 
before dark, and then a half mile run would take us 
to a good camping place near the head of the second 
fall. Here Roos intervened to point out that the sun 
was already behind the western wall, and asking if it 
wouldn't be possible to camp where we were. He 
wanted to keep the "continuity" of this particular 
piece of "lining" unbroken, and would need good 
light to finish it in. Blackmore said he could manage 
the camp if we thought our ear-drums would stand the 
roar. 

So we unloaded the boat, and Blackmore leading 
her into the quietest pool he could find, moored her 



112 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

for the night. As there was a couple of feet of "lop" 
even there, this was rather a nice operation. With 
lines to stern and bow, and held off from the rocks on 
either side by lashed pike-poles, she looked for all the 
world like some fractious horse that had been secured 
to prevent its banging itself up against the sides of 
its stall. It was a beastly job, carrying the fifteen or 
twenty heavy parcels of the outfit a hundred yards 
over those huge polished boulders to the bit of sand- 
bar where camp was to be pitched. My old ankles — 
endlessly sprained during my focTtball days — pro- 
tested every step of my several round trips, and I 
congratulated myself that I had had the foresight to 
bring leather braces to stiffen them. Reeking with 
perspiration after I had thrown down my last load, I 
decided to use the river for a bath that I would have 
to take anyway on shifting from my wet clothes. The 
half -glacial water was not a lot above freezing, of 
course; but that is of small moment when one has 
plenty of animal heat stored up to react against it. 
My worst difficulty was from the bumpiness of my 
rocky bathing pool, which also had a rather trouble- 
some undercurrent pulling out toward the racing 
chute of the main channel. Blackmore, pop-eyed with 
astonishment, came down to watch the show. It was 
the first time he had ever seen a man take a voluntary 
bath in Surprise Rapids, he said. And all the others 
— the involuntary bathers — they had picked up later 
in Kinbasket Lake. 

That was about the most restricted space I can 
recall ever having camped in. The great boulders 
of the high-water channel extended right up to the 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 113 

foot of the mountain wall and neither the one nor the 
other afforded enough level space to set a doll's house. 
A four-by-six patch of sand was the most extensive 
area that seemed to offer, and, doubling this in size 
by cutting away a rotting spruce stump and a section 
of fallen birch, there was just enough room for the 
little shed-tent. It was a snug and comfortable camp, 
though, and highly picturesque, perched as it was al- 
most in the spray of the cascade. The noise was the 
worst thing, and we would have had to stay there 
even longer than we did to become quite used to it. 
All of us were shouting in each other's ears for days 
afterwards, and even trying to converse in signs in the 
idyllic quietude of Kinbasket Lake. 

The storm which Blackmore's seer-like vision had 
descried in the blue-green auroral flutters of a couple 
of nights previously arrived quite on schedule. Al- 
though the western sky had glowed for half an hour 
after sunset with that supposedly optimistic tinge of 
primrose and terra-cotta, it was pouring before mid- 
night, and the next morning there was truly almost 
as much water in the air as in the river. Pictures were 
out of the question, so there was nothing to do but 
hang on until the weather cleared. Leaving Roos 
whittling and Andy struggling to divert a swelling 
young river that was trying to sluice away the sand 
on which the tent was pitched, Blackmore and I pulled 
on our waterproofs and clambered a mile through the 
woods to a camp of C. P. R. engineers. Blackmore 
wanted to get an extra axe; I to get some further 
data on the fall of the river. We found a crude cable- 
ferry thrown across just below the foot of the big 



114 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

fall, and a rough, boggy path from the eastern end of 
it took us to the camp of three or four comfortable 
cabins. 

The Canadian Pacific, I learned — both on account 
of the high and increasing cost of its oil fuel and be- 
cause of the trouble experienced in clearing their tun- 
nels from smoke — was contemplating the electrifica- 
tion of all of its mountain divisions. There were 
numerous high falls along the line where power could 
be economically developed, but it was not considered 
desirable that the scenic beauty of these should be 
marred by diversion. Besides the Columbia, in a 
hundred miles of the Big Bend, offered the oppor- 
tunity for developing more hydro-electric energy than 
all the west of Canada could use in the next twenty 
years. The Surprise Rapids project alone would 
provide far more power than the Canadian Pacific 
could use for traction, and it was expected that there 
would be a large surplus for municipal and industrial 
uses along the line. "All this, of course," the en- 
gineer at the camp explained, "in the event the com- 
pany decides to go ahead with the development. 
Raising the money will probably be the greatest dif- 
ficulty, and in the present state of the financial mar- 
ket it is hard to see how much can be done for two 
or three years. In the meantime we are measuring 
the flow of the river every day, and will have accurate 
data to go by when the time for construction comes." 

I learned that the total length of Surprise Rapids 
was three and a third miles, in which distance there 
was a fall of nearly one hundred feet. The greatest 
drop was in that stretch which we were waiting to 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 115 

"line," where there was a fall of twenty-one feet in 
seven hundred and fifty. At the second cascade 
there was a fall of fifteen feet in twelve hundred, 
and at the third, twenty-five feet in twenty-five hun- 
dred. It was planned to build the dam across the 
very narrow canyon near the foot of the lower fall, 
making it of such a height that a lake would be backed 
up as far as Bea vermouth, incidentally, of course, 
wiping out the whole of Surprise Rapids. "They 
can't wipe it out any too soon to suit me," Black- 
more commented on hearing this. "It'd have saved 
me a lot of work and many a wetting if they'd wiped 
it out twenty j^ear ago. And that's saying nothing 
of the men drownded there. It was that big whirl- 
pool down through the trees there that did for Walter 
Steinhoff." 

We had left the camp now and were picking our 
way down the narrow trail to the foot of the second 
fall. I had been waiting to hear Blackmore speak of 
Steinhoff for two reasons : first, because I was curious 
to know how mucli truth there was in those dramatic 
versions of his death I had heard in Golden, and also 
because the subject would lead up naturally to that 
of the buried whisky. This latter was rather too 
delicate a matter to broach offhand, and I had there- 
fore been carefully watching for a favourable opening. 
Now that it had come, I was quick to take advantage 
of it. 

"Tell me about Steinhoff," I said. "He was on 
some kind of a boot-legging stunt, wasn't he?" I 
was just a bit diffident about bringing up that drink- 
running business, for although I had been told that 



116 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Blackmore was a smooth hand at the game himself, 
I had a sort of sneaking idea that it was the kind of 
a thing a man ought to be sensitive about, like having 
had smallpox or a sister in the movies. I need not have 
worried, however. "You bet he was boot-legging," 
Blackmore replied; "and so was I. Both outfits 
heading for Tete Jaune Cache on the Grand Trunk, 
and racing to get there first. That was what got him 
into trouble — trying to catch up with me after I had 
passed him by running and lining the first fall (the 
one we are doing the same way now) while he had 
portaged. I reckon it was his first intention to por- 
tage all the way to the foot of the second fall, but 
when he saw me slip by in the water he put in his 
canoes at the foot of the first fall and came after me." 
We had come out above the river now, and I saw 
a savage stretch of foam-white water falling in a roar- 
ing cascade to a mighty whirlpool that filled all of 
the bottom of the steeply-walled amphitheatre formed 
by a right-angling bend of the Columbia. Thirty 
feet or more above the present level of the whirlpool 
were the marks of its swirling scour at mid-summer 
high-water. Awesome enough now (and it was not 
any the less so to me since we still had to take the 
boat through it), I could see at once that, with the 
power of the floods driving it round and round at 
turbine speed, it must indeed be a veritable thing of 
terror. It was into this whirlpool, as well as others 
at Revelstoke Canyon and Death Rapids, that whole 
uprooted pines were said to be sucked in flood-time, 
to reappear only as battered logs many miles below. 
There seemed hardly enough water there at the pres- 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 117 

ent to make this possible; but the story was at least 
credible to me now, which was more than it had been 
previously. 

"So this is your 'All Day Sucker,' " I remarked 
carelessly, in a studied attempt to keep Blackmore 
from noting how greatly the savage maelstrom had 
impressed me. Seeing through the bluff, he grinned 
indulgently and resumed his story of Steinhoff as 
soon as we had moved far enough round the whirlpool 
to make his voice comfortably heard above the roar 
of the cascade. A line had parted — sawed through 
in working round a rocky point a few hundred yards 
above — and Steinhoff 's big Peterboro was swept out 
into the current. Striking a rock, it turned over and 
threw him into the water. He made a brave effort 
to swim out, keeping his head above water most of 
the way down the cascade. The whirlpool had been 
too much for him, however. He was fighting hard 
to keep up when he was carried into the vortex and 
sucked under. Blackmore took no stock in the story 
of the dramatic gesture of farewell. "A man don't 
pull that grand opry stuff with the cold of the Co- 
lumbia biting into his spine," was the way he put it. 

Then I told him about the whisky — spoke to him 
as a son to his father. And he, meeting me point for 
point in all seriousness of spirit, answered as father to 
son. He thought there was little chance of finding 
anything along the river. He had not done so him- 
self for a number of years — and he hadn't been over- 
looking any bets, either. There was, of course, still 
much good stuff buried in the drift below Middle 
River, but it would be like looking for a needle in a 



118 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

haystack trying to find it. But the cache above 
Canoe River — ah, that was another matter ! Captain 
Armstrong could be absolutely depended upon in a 
matter of that kind, and the directions sounded right 
as rain. Yes, he quite understood that I should want 
to take it all to California with me. He would want 
to do the same thing if he were in my place. It would 
be easy as picking pippins getting it over the line. 
He could tell me three different ways, all of them 
dead sure. He would not think of taking any of it 
for himself. The rum we had would'be ample for the 
trip, except in extreme emergency. That "thirty 
over-proof" went a long way. And I need not worry 
in the least about Andy. He wasn't a teetotaler 
exactly, but he never took too much under any provo- 
cation. Yes, I could depend upon the both of them 
to nose out that stuff at the old ferry. Put it there! 
We looked each other square in the eye, and shook 
hands solemnly there above the big whirlpool which 
was originally responsible for the good fortune that 
had come to us — or rather to me. Men have clasped 
hands and sworn to stand by each other in lesser 
things. At least that was the way it seemed to me 
at the moment, I could have embraced the fine old 
woodsman for his loyalty and generosity of spirit. 
I always called him Bob after that. 

The rain thinned down and became a light Scotch 
mist as we picked our way back to camp. That struck 
me as being a good omen — it's being "Scotch," I 
mean. Later it cleared up entirely, and there was a 
glorious fairweather sunset of glowing saffron and 
flaming poppy red. To the northwest — Canoe 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 119 

River-ward — there poured a wonderful light of pale 
liquescent amber. I had never seen such a light on 
land or sea, I told myself; or anywhere else, for that 
matter — except when holding a glass of Scotch up 
against the sun. That was another good omen. 
Funny thing, but I can still recall the date offhand, 
so indelibly had the promise of that day impressed 
itself on my mind. It was the first of October. 

Although it snowed an inch or two during the night, 
the following morning fulfilled the promise of the 
sunset by breaking bright and cloudless. We were 
to line the boat down empty for a couple of hundred 
yards, and then load up again and line about an 
equal distance of slightly better water. This would 
take us to the brink of the abrupt fall, where both 
outfit and boat had to be portaged over the rocks for 
a short distance. That would leave us clear for the 
short, swift run to the head of the second fall. 

Cutting himself a "sylvan frame" through the 
pines on a point a hundred yards below the camp, 
Roos set up to shoot the first piece of lining. It was 
a mean looking job, for the river was tumbling in a 
half -cataract all the way, turning and squirming like 
a wounded dragon. I could see Blackmore was a bit 
worried over it, and, as the sequel proved, with good 
reason, I never quite understood his explanation of 
the cause of what happened, but I believe he claimed 
it was due to his obeying (against his better judg- 
ment) Roos' signal to keep the boat in fairly close 
to the bank so that she would not pass "out of the 
picture" — beyond the range of his lens, that is. At 
any rate, the boat had hardly started before she swung 



120 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

broadside to the current and, clapping like a limpet 
upon a big round boulder, hung there immovable. 
Heeled till her starboard side showed like the belly 
of a sharply sheering shark, her port gunwale dipped 
deep into the swirling current. In a wink she had 
taken all the water she would hold with the half-heel 
that was on her — enough, perhaps, to fill her half full 
when on an even keel. 

It was a case for instant action — a case where the 
nearest available man had to follow his first hunch 
without thinking it over or counting the cost. A few 
seconds more on that rock, and one of two things 
must happen to the boat: either she would settle a 
few inches farther, fill completely and sink, or else 
the force of the current would tear her to pieces where 
she was. Blackmore was tugging at his line and 
shouting directions, but the roar stopped the words 
at his lips. Andy did not need to be told what was 
needed, however. For myself, I was not quite sure of 
what to do, and less so of how to do it. Also, I 
doubted my ability to keep my footing in the current. 
In short, I found myself thinking and weighing 
chances in one of those emergencies where a man to 
be worth his salt has no business to do either 

There was only one place where a man could get 
at the boat, and Andy beat me to it by a mile. (I 
would have seen to that even had he moved a lot 
slower than he did.) He was rather more than waist 
deep, but quite safe as long as the boat stuck where 
she was. Unfortunately, getting her off was the very 
thing he was there for. It was a good deal like a 
man's having to saw off the branch on which he sat. 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 121 

But Andy never hesitated — probably because there 
was not time to think and reckon the consequences. 
Setting his heavy shoulders under her bilge, he gave 
a mighty upward heave. She shuddered through her 
long red length, and then, as the kick of the current 
got under her submerged gunwale, shot up and off as 
though discharged from a catapult. The job had 
been well done, too, for she came off with her stern 
down stream, which made it comparatively easy for 
Blackmore to check her way with his line, even half- 
filled as she was. 

Whether he failed to recover as the boat was swept 
away, or whether he lost his balance in avoiding en- 
tanglement in the line, Andy was not quite sure. His 
first recollection after releasing the boat, he said, was 
of floundering in the water and of finding that his 
first kick or two did not strike bottom. The thing 
that is always possible when a man has lifted off a 
boat in a swift current had happened : he had lost his 
footing, and in just about the one worst place in the 
whole Columbia. 

Blackmore, dragged down the bank after his floun- 
dering boat, was not in a position where he could 
throw the end of his line to any purpose. I waded 
in and reached out my pike-pole, but Andy's back 
was to it the only time he came within grabbing dis- 
tance. The only thing that saved him was luck — the 
fact that the current at the point he lost his footing 
did not swirl directly into the main chute, but did a 
little double-shuffle of its own along the side of an 
eddy before taking the big leap. Hooking into the 
solid green water of that eddy, Andy found himself 



122 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

a toehold, and presently clambered out. He had not 
swallowed any water, and did not seem much chilled 
or winded. A violent sickness of the stomach, where 
the cold had arrested digestive operations, was about 
the only ill effect. What seemed to annoy him most 
was the fact that all of his pockets were turned wrong- 
side-out, with all of their contents — save only his 
watch, which had been secured by a thong — missing. 
Blackmore nodded grimly to me as he came up after 
securing the boat. ''Now perhaps you'll believe what 
I told you about the old Columbia picking pockets," 
he said dryly. 

Roos came down complaining that he had been too 
far away to pick up any details of the show even with 
his "six-inch" lens and cursing his luck for not having 
been set up closer at hand. Considering what he had 
missed, I thought he showed unwonted delicacy in 
not asking Blackmore and Andy to stage it over 
again for him. 

Bailing out the boat, we found one oar missing, but 
this we subsequently recovered from an eddy below. 
That left our net loss for the mishap only the con- 
tents of Andy's pockets and the picture Roos did not 
get. Some might have figured in the extra ration of 
rum Andy drew to straighten out the kinks of his 
outraged stomach; but that seemed hardly the sport- 
ing way to look at it, especially with our prospects in 
the drink line being what they were. 

The portage at the fall proved a mighty stiff bit of 
hard labour. It was one thing to skid the boat along 
on the pine needles at Beavermouth with a couple of 
dozen men pushing it, and quite another for three 




"shooting" the first bit of lining at surprisk 
RAPIDS (above) 

the camp where the roar of the rapids deafened vs( centre) 

WHERE STEINHOF WAS DROWNED {hcloic) 





WHERE ANDY JUST MISSED DROWNING IN SURPRISE 

RAPIDS (above) 

LOOKING THROUGH THE PINES AT SURPRISE RAPIDS (centre) 
HEAD OF SECOND FALL OF SURPRISE RAPIDS (below) 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 123 

men to take it out of the water, lift it over forty or 
fifty feet of boulders, and put it back into the river 
again. By the free use of rollers — cut from young 
firs — we managed, however, Roos cranking his camera 
through all of the operation and telling us to "Make 
it snappy!" and not to be "foot-hogs." Almost worse 
than portaging the boat was the unspeakably toil- 
some task of packing the outfit over the boulders for 
a couple of hundred yards to where there was a quiet 
spot to load again. Every step had to be balanced 
for, and even then one was down on his knees half the 
time. With my numerous bad joints — there are but 
three from shoulder to heel that had not been sprained 
or dislocated from two to a dozen times — this boulder 
clambering work was the only thing in connection 
with the whole voyage that I failed to enjoy. 

A half mile run with an eight-mile current took us 
to the head of the second fall, all but the first hundred 
yards of which had to be lined. Landing this time on 
the west bank, we worked the boat down without much 
difficulty past the jutting point where the line of 
Steinhoff's boat had parted. Blackmore had hoped to 
line her all the way down without unloading, but the 
last fifty yards before the cascade tumbled into the 
big whirlpool were so thickly studded with rocks along 
the bank that he finally decided not to risk it. As 
there were thirty or forty feet of deep pools and 
eddies between the rocks on which she was stuck and 
the nearest stretch of unsubmerged boulders, unload- 
ing was a particularly awkward piece of wOrk. 
Finally ever jibing was shifted out onto a flat-topped 
rock, and Roos and I were left to get this ashore 



124. DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

while Andy and Blackmore completed lining down. 
It was an especially nice job, taking the boat down 
that last steep pitch into the big whirlpool and then 
working her round a huge square-faced rock to a 
quiet eddy, and I should greatly like to have seen it. 
Unluckily, what with stumbling over hidden boulders 
and being down with my nose in the water half of the 
time, and the thin blue mist that hovered round me 
the rest of the time from what I said as a consequence 
of stumbling, I could only guess at the finesse and 
highly technical skill with which the- difficult opera- 
tion was accomplished. The worst part appeared to 
be getting her down the fall. Once clear of the sub- 
merged rocks, Blackmore seemed to make the whirl- 
pool do his work for him. Poised on a projecting log 
of the jam packed on top of the jutting rock, he paid 
out a hundred feet of line and let the racing swirl of 
the spinning pool carry the boat far out beyond all 
obstructions. Then, gently and delicately as if play- 
ing a salmon on a trout rod, he nursed her into an 
eddy and simply coiled his line and let the back- 
setting current carry her in to the bit of sandy beach 
where he wanted to tie her up for the night. It takes 
a lifetime of swift-water experience to master the 
intricacies of an operation like that. 

It was still early in the afternoon, but with a thick 
mist falling Blackmore thought best to stop where we 
were. The next available camping place was below 
the half-mile-long third cascade, and no old river man 
likes to go into a rapid when the visibility is poor. 
We pitched the tent in a hole cut out of the thick- 
growing woods on a low bench at the inner angle of 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 125 

the bend. Everything was soaking wet, but it was 
well back from the falls, and for the first time in two 
days we were able to talk to each other without shout- 
ing. Not that we did so, however; from sheer force 
of habit we continued roaring into each other's ears 
for a week or more yet. 

The great pile of logs on top of the flat-topped 
rock above the whirlpool had fascinated me from the 
first. Over a hundred feet square, forty feet high, 
and packed as though by a titanic hydraulic press, it 
must have contained thousands and thousands of 
cords of wood. On Blackmore's positive assurance 
as a timberman that there was nothing in the pile of 
any value for lumber, even in the improbable con- 
tingency that a flood would ever carry it beyond the 
big drifts of Kinbasket Lake, I decided to make a 
bonfire of it. Never had I had such an opportunity, 
both on the score of the sheer quantity of combustible 
and the spectacular setting for illumination. 

The whirlpool was whouf-whoufing greedily as it 
wolfed the whole cascade when I clambered up just 
before dark to touch off my beacon. It was fairly 
dry at the base, and a pile of crisp shavings off a slab 
from some distant up-river sawmill caught quickly. 
From a spark of red flickering dimly through the 
mist when we sat down to supper, this had grown to a 
roaring furnace by the time we had relaxed to pipes 
and cigarettes. An hour later the flames had eaten a 
clear chimney up through the jam and the red light 
from their leaping tips was beginning to drive back 
the encompassing darkness. Roos, who had read 
about India, thought it would have been fine if we 



126 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

only had a few widows to cast themselves on the flam- 
ing pyre and commit suttee. Andy and Blackmore, 
both sentimental bachelors, were a unit in maintain- 
ing that it would be a shame to waste good widows 
that way, especially on the practically widowless Big 
Bend. All three were arguing the point rather heat- 
edly when they crawled into their blankets. For 
myself, with a vision of the wonder about to unroll 
impinging on my brain, I could not think of turning 
in for hours yet. 

By ten o'clock the pile was well alight underneath, 
but it was not until nearly midnight, when the mist 
had turned to snow and a strong wind had sprung 
up, that it was blazing full strength. I hardly know 
what would have been the direction of the wind in 
the upper air, but, cupped in the embrasure of the 
bend, it was sucking round and round, like the big 
whirlpool, only more fitfully and with an upward 
rather than a downward pull. Now it would drag 
the leaping flame-column a hundred feet in the air, 
twisting it into lambent coils and fining the tip down 
to a sharp point, like that of the Avenging Angel's 
Sword of Fire in the old Biblical prints, now sweep it 
out in a shivering sheet above the whirlpool, now 
swing it evenly round and round as though the flame, 
arrow-pointed and attenuated, were the radium- 
coated hand of a Gargantuan clock being swiftly re- 
volved in the dark. 

But the wonder of wonders was less the fire itself 
than the marvellous transformations wrought by the 
light it threw. And the staggering contrasts! The 
illuminated snow clouds drifting along the frosted- 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 127 

pink curtain of the tree-clad mountain walls made a 
roseate fairyland; even the foam covered sweep of 
the cascade, its roar drowned in the sharp crackle of 
the flames, was softened and smoothened until it 
seemed to billow like the sunset-flushed canvas of a 
ship becalmed : but the whirlpool, its sinister character 
only accentuated by the conflict of cross-shadows and 
reflections, was a veritable Pit of Damnation, choking 
and coughing as it swirled and rolled in streaky coils 
of ox-blood, in fire-stabbed welters of fluid coal-tar. 

Wrapped in my hooded dufile coat, I paced the 
snow-covered moss and exulted in the awesome spec- 
tacle until long after midnight. I have never envied 
Nero very poignantly since. Given a fiddle and a 
few Christians, I would have had all that was his on 
the greatest night of his life — and then some. Father 
Tiber never had a whirlpool like mine, even on the day 
Horatius swam it "heavy with his armour and spent 
with changing blows." 

The next morning, though too heavily overcast for 
pictures, was still clear enough to travel. The head 
riffles of the third fall of Surprise Rapids began a 
little below our camp, so that we started lining almost 
immediately. Three or four times we pulled across the 
river, running short stretches and lining now down 
one side and now the other. There was not so great 
a rate of drop as at the first and second falls, but the 
whole stream was choked with barely submerged rocks 
and lining was difficult on account of the frequent 
cliffs. 

It was about half way down that I all but messed 
things up by failing to get into action quickly enough 



128 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

at a crossing. The fault, in a way, was Blackmore's, 
because of his failure to tell me in advance what was 
expected, and then — when the order had to be passed 
instantly — for standing rather too much on ceremony 
in the manner of passing it. We were about to pull 
to the opposite side to line down past a riffle which 
Blackmore reckoned too rough to risk running. 
There was about a ten-mile current, and it would 
have required the smartest kind of a get-away and 
the hardest kind of pulling to make the other bank 
without being carried down onto the riffle. The boat 
was headed up-stream, and, as Blackmore had not 
told me he intended to cross, I took it for granted he 
was going to run. So, when Boos shoved off and 
jumped in, I rested on my oar in order that Andy 
could bring the boat sharply round and head it down 
stream. Blackmore's excited yell was the first inti- 
mation I had that anything was wrong. "Pull like 
hell! You! . . . Mister Freeman!" 

That "Mister," and his momentary pause before 
uttering it, defeated the purpose of the order. I 
pulled all right, and so hard that my oar-blade picked 
up a very sizable hunk of river and flung it in Black- 
more's face. That upset my balance, and I could not 
recover quickly enough to keep the boat's head to the 
current. With characteristic presence of mind, 
Blackmore changed tactics instantly. "Got to chance 
it now!" he shouted, and threw such a pull onto his 
steering paddle that the handle bent to more than 
half a right angle where he laid it over the gunwale. 
There was one jutting rock at the head of the riffle 
that had to be missed; the rest was all a matter of 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 129 

whether or not the next couple of hundred yards of 
submerged boulders were deej)ly enough covered to 
let us pass over them. There was no way of avoiding 
them, no chance to lay a course between them. 

Blackmore was a bit wilder about the eyes than I 
had seen him before; but he had stopped swearing 
and his mouth was set in a hard, determined line. 
Andy, with chesty grunts, was fairly flailing the 
water with swift, short-arm strokes. I did not need 
to be told to refrain from pulling in order that the 
others could swing her head as far toward the west 
bank as possible before the rock was reached. In- 
stead, I held ready for the one quick backing stroke 
that would be called for in the event a collision seemed 
imminent at the last moment. It was the wave thrown 
off by the rock itself that helped us most when the 
showdown came. Shooting by the jagged barrier so 
close that Andy could have fended with his hand, the 
boat plunged over a short, sharp pitch and hit the 
white water with a bang. 

That was by long odds the roughest stuff we had 
been into so far. The waves were curling up well 
above our heads, and every one we hit left a foot or 
two of its top with us — solid green water, most of it, 
that began accumulating rather alarmingly in the 
bottom of the boat. There was no regularity in the 
way they ran, either. One would come mushrooming 
fairly over the bows, another would flop aboard over 
the beam, and every now and then a wild side-winder, 
missing its spring at the forward part of the boat, 
would dash a shower of spray over the quarter. From 
the bank she must have been pretty well out of sight 



130 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

most of the time, for I often saw spray thrown ten 
or fifteen feet to either side and twice as far astern. 
All hands were drenched from the moment we struck 
the first comber, of course, which was doubtless why 
a wail from Roos that the water was going down his 
neck seemed to strike Blackmore as a bit superfluous. 
"Inside or outside your neck?" he roared back, adding 
that if it was the former the flow could be checked by 
the simple and natural expedient of keeping the 
mouth shut. Very properly, our "skipper" had the 
feeling that, in a really tight place, *all the talking 
necessary for navigation should be done from the 
"bridge," and that "extraneous" comment should be 
held over to smooth water. 

Before we had run a hundred yards the anxious look 
on Blackmore's face had given way to one of relief 
and exultation. "There's more water over the rocks 
than I reckoned," he shouted. "Going to run right 
through." And run we did, all of the last mile or 
more of Surprise Rapids and right on through the 
still swift but comparatively quiet water below. Here 
we drifted with the current for a ways, while all hands 
turned to and bailed. I took this, the first occasion 
that had offered, to assure Blackmore that he needn't 
go to the length of calling me "Mister" in the future 
when he had urgent orders to give, and incidentally 
apologized for getting off on the wrong foot at the 
head of the first rapid. "Since that worked out to 
save us half a mile of darn dirty lining and two or 
three hours of time," he replied with a grin, "I guess 
we won't Avorry about it this crack, ^Mister — I 
mean. Freeman. Mebbe I better get used to saying 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 131 

it that way 'gainst when I'll need to spit it out 
quick." 

It was a pleasant run from the foot of Surprise 
Rapids down to Kinbasket Lake, or at least it was 
pleasant until the rain set in again. There is a fall 
of sixty-four feet in the sixteen miles — most of it in 
the first ten. It was a fine swift current, with a 
number of riffles but no bad water at any point. It 
was good to be free for a while from the tension which 
is never absent when working in really rough water, 
and I have no doubt that Blackmore felt better about 
it than any of the rest of us. Surprise was his espe- 
cial bete noir, and he assured me that he had never 
come safely through it without swearing never to 
tackle it again. Roos, drying out in the bow like a 
tabby licking her wet coat smooth after being rained 
on, sang "Green River" all the way, and I tried to 
train Andy to pull in time to the rhythm and join in 
the chorus. As the chorus had much about drink in 
it, it seemed only fitting — considering what was wait- 
ing for us at Canoe River — that we should sing it. 
And we did. "Floating Down the Old Green River" 
became the "official song" of that particular part of 
the voyage. Later . . . but why anticipate? 

We landed for lunch about where the water began 
to slacken above the lake. The water of the little 
stream at the mouth of which we tied up the boat was 
of a bright transparent amber in colour. Andy, 
sapient of the woods, thought it must flow from a lake 
impounded behind a beaver-dam in the high moun- 
tains, and that the stain was that of rotting wood. 
Beaver signs were certainly much in evidence all over 



132 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the little bench where we lunched. Several large Cot- 
tonwood trunks — one of them all of two feet in diam- 
eter — had been felled by the tireless little engineers, 
and we found a pile of tooth-torn chips large enough 
to kindle our fire with. While tea was boiling Black- 
more pulled a couple of three-pound Dolly Varden 
out of the mouth of the creek, only to lose his hooks 
and line when a still larger one connected up with 
them. Roos, who was under orders to get an effective 
fishing picture, was unable to go into action with his 
camera on account of the poor light. - 

It had begun to rain hard by the time we had 
shoved back into the river after lunch. There were 
still five miles to go to reach the camping ground 
Blackmore had decided upon, half way down the east 
side of Kinbasket Lake, just below Middle River — 
slack water all the way. Andy and I pulled it in a 
slushy half-snow-half-rain that was a lot wetter and 
unpleasanter than the straight article of either va- 
riety. Of a lake which is one of the loveliest in all the 
world in the sunlight, nothing was to be seen save a 
stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating 
upon grey-brown rocky shores. That the wind and 
waves headed us did not make the pulling any lighter, 
for the boat's considerable freeboard gave both a lot 
of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept 
Andy and me warm, however, which gave us at least 
that advantage over Roos and Blackmore. The latter 
had to face it out at his paddle, but Roos, a bedrag- 
gled lump of sodden despair, finally gave up and 
crawled under the tarpaulin with the bags of beans 
and bacon, remaining there until we reached port. 



THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS 133 

All in all, I think that was the most miserable camp 
I ever helped to pitch. The snow, refusing persist- 
ently either to harden or to soften, adhered clingingly 
to everything it touched. We were two hours clear- 
ing a space for the tent, setting it up and collecting 
enough boughs to cushion the floor. By that time 
pretty nearly everything not hermetically sealed was 
wet, including the blankets and the "dry" clothes. No 
one but Andy could have started a camp-fire under 
such conditions, and no one but Blackmore could have 
dooked a piping hot dinner on it. I forget whether 
it was Roos or myself who contributed further to save 
the day. Anyhow, it was one of the two of us that 
suggested cooking a can of plum-pudding in about its 
own bulk of "thirty per overproof" rum. That lent 
the saving touch. In spite of a leaking tent and wet 
blankets, the whole four of us turned in singing "End 
of a Perfect Day" and "Old Green River." The 
latter was prophetic. A miniature one — coming 
through the roof of the tent — had the range of the 
back of my neck for most of the night. 



CHAPTER VII 

II. RUNNING THE BEND 

Kinhasket Lake and Rapids 

It continued slushing all night and most of the next 
day, keeping us pretty close to camp. Andy, like the 
good housewife he was, kept snugging up every time 
he got a chance, so that things assumed a homelier 
and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered 
for a couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of 
the lake in the forenoon. The low-hanging clouds 
still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I found 
unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift 
corralled by this remarkable catch-all of the upper 
Columbia. The main accumulation of flotsam and 
jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks 
I chanced onto almost everything one can imagine, 
from a steel rail — with the ties that had served to 
float it down still spiked to it — to a fragment of a 
vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called "the human 
touch" was furnished by an enormous uprooted 
spruce, on which some amorous lumber- jack had 
been pouring out his love through the blade of his 
axe. This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-di- 
ameter "bleeding heart" pierced by an arrow. Inside 
the roughly hewn "pericardium" were the initials "K. 
N." and "P. R.," with the date "July 4, 1910." One 
couldn't be quite sure whether the arrow stood for 

134 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 135 

a heart quake or a heart break. Andy, who was senti- 
mental and inchned to put woman in the abstract on 
a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but 
Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in 
his day, and therefore inclined to cynicism as he 
neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it was heart 
break — that the honest lumber- jack had hacked in the 
arrow and the drops of blood after he had been jilted 
by some jade. Roos wanted to make a movie of this 
simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by 
and registering "pensive memories," or something of 
the kind; but I managed to discourage him by the 
highly technical argument that it would impair the 
"continuity" of the "sportsmanship" which was the 
prime motif of the present picture. 

Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift 
in the afternoon. It occupied a hundred acres or more 
of sand and mud flats which constituted the lower part 
of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the 
lake by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle 
River. At a first glance it seemed nothing more than 
a great wilderness of tree trunks — prostrate, up- 
ended, woVen and packed together — extending for 
hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was be- 
tween these logs that the smaller things had lodged. 
There were a number of boats, not gi'eatly damaged, 
and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen 
more. I am convinced that a half day's search would 
have discovered the material for building and furnish- 
ing a house, though carpets and wall paper would 
hardly have been all one could desire. I even found 
a curling iron — closely clasped by the bent nail upon 



136 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

which it had been hung on the log of a cabin — and 
a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth salving, as 
it appeared — according to Blackmore — to be a "mili- 
tary model" of a decade or so back, and the steel-work 
was badly rusted. 

However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnishing 
we were after. One could hardly be expected to 
slither about in soft slush for secondhand things of 
that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first 
sight of a silt-submerged cask, only to find the head 
missing and nothing but mud in it. So, too, my sec- 
ond and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the 
"View Halloo," and my heart gave a mighty leap. 
His treasure trove had the head intact, and even the 
bung in situ. But alas ! the latter had become slightly 
started, and although the contents had both smell and 
colour they were so» heavily impregnated with river 
mud that they would hardly have been deemed fit for 
consumption except in New York and California, and 
not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That 
cask was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several 
others had the old familiar smell, and that was all. 
But there is no doubt in the world that there is whisky 
in that drift pile — hundreds of gallons of it, and some 
very old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never 
knew him to lie — about serious matters, I mean. In 
hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected to draw 
a long bead. I pass on this undeniably valuable in- 
formation to any one that cares to profit by it. There 
are no strings attached. But of course ... in the 
event of success . . . Pasadena always finds 
me! . . . 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 137 

We did have one find, though, that was so remarka- 
ble as to be worth all the trouble and disappointment 
of our otherwise futile search. This was a road- 
bridge, with instinct. The manner in which this had 
been displayed was so astonishing as to be almost 
beyond belief; indeed, I would hesitate about setting 
down the facts had I not a photograph to prove them. 
This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had 
doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some 
tributary of the upper river which it had spanned. 
This was probably somewhere between Golden and 
Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or 
more of swift water, including the falls of Surprise 
Rapids, without losing more than a few planks. This 
in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at all 
to the fact* that, when it finally decided it had come 
far enough, the sagacious structure had gone and 
planked itself down squarely across another stream. 
It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had 
actually saved my feet from getting wet when I 
rushed to Blackmore's aid in up-ending the cask of 
mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows 
Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water 
flowing directly beneath him. It would have been a 
more comprehensive and convincing picture if there 
had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I 
had to set up on a stump, and in a position which 
showed less of both stream and bridge than I might 
have had from a better place. I swear (and so does 
Blackmore) that we didn't place the bridge where it 
was. It was much too large for that. Roos wanted 
to shoot the whole three of us standing on it and 



138 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

registering "unbounded wonderment," but the light 
was never right for it up to the morning of our de- 
parture, and then there wasn't time. 

It rained and snowed all that night and most of the 
following day. During the afternoon of the latter the 
clouds broke up twice or thrice, and through rifts in 
the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of the 
peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above 
the precipitous western walls of the lake. The most 
conspicuous feature of the sky-line was the three- 
peaked "Trident," rising almost perpendicularly 
from a glittering field of glacial ice and impaling 
great masses of pendant cumulo-nimbi on its splin- 
tered prongs. Strings of lofty glacier-set summits 
marked the line of the backbone of the Selkirks to 
southeast and northwest, each of them sending down 
rain-swollen torrents to tumble into the lake in 
cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we 
knew the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow 
and ice, but this was cut off from our vision by the 
more imminent lake-wall under which we were 
camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible 
to the tourist its fame will reach to the end of the 
earth. This is a consummation which may be effected 
in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise 
Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs 
up a lake to Beavermouth. The journey to this spot 
of incomparable beauty could then be made soft 
enough to suit all but the most effete. 

A torrential rain, following a warm southerly 
breeze which sprang up in the middle of the afternoon, 
lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and shortly, 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 139 

from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous 
rumble and roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore's 
practised ear led him to pronounce it a slide of both 
earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere on Trident 
Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He 
proved to be right on both counts. When the clouds 
lifted again at sunset, a long yellow scar gashed the 
shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident Creek 
to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter 
had completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had 
been dammed up by the slide, and that there would 
be all hell popping when it broke through. 

Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed, 
Roos, just before supper, chanced upon Steinhoff's 
grave. It was under a small pine, not fifty feet from 
our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth 
that it had escaped our notice for two days. It was 
marked only by a fragment split from the stern of 
a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the pine 
trunk and with the single word "Steinhoff" carved 
in rude capitals. At one corner, in pencil, was an 
inscription stating that the board had been put up 
in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With 
the golden sunset light streaming through the trees, 
Roos, always strong for "pathetic human touches" to 
serve as a sombre background for his Mack Sennett 
stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. 
Andy and Blackmore and I were to come climbing 
up to the grave from the lake, read the inscription, 
and then look at each other and shake our heads 
ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time 
until we, too, should fall prey to the implacable river. 



140 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

I refused straightaway, on the ground that I had 
signed up to act the part of a light comedy sportsman 
and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy 
were more amenable. In rehearsal, however, the ex- 
pressions on their honest faces were so wooden and 
embarrassed that Roos finally called me up to stand 
out of range and "say something to make 'em look 
natural." I refrain from recording what I said; but 
I still maintain that shot was an interruption of the 
"continuity" of my "gentleman-sportsman" picture. 
I have not yet heard if it survived the -studio surgery. 
Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at 
his set-line, found a three-foot ling or fresh-water cod 
floundering on the end of it. Roos persuaded him to 
keep it over night so that the elusive "fishing picture" 
might be made the following morning in case the light 
was good. As there were five or six inches of water 
in the bottom of the boat, Andy threw the ling in there 
for the night in preference to picketing him out on a 
line. There was plenty of water to have given the 
husky shovel-nose ample room to circulate with com- 
fort if only he had been content to take it easy and 
not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his immi- 
nent movie engagement that brought on his attack of 
flightiness. At any rate, he tried to burrow under a 
collapsible sheet-iron stove (which, preferring to do 
with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and got 
stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water 
enough to keep alive in, but in the night — when it 
cleared off and turned cold — his tail, which was bent 
up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right 
angles. But I am getting ahead of my story. 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 141 

The next morning, the sixth of October, broke bril- 
liantly clear, with the sun gilding the prongs of the 
"Trident" and throwing the whole snowy line of the 
Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise 
sky. Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not 
to be rushed in working down through the dreaded 
*'Twenty-One-]Mile" Rapids to Canoe River, rooted 
us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before 
breakfast. He had reckoned without the "fishing pic- 
ture," however. Roos wanted bright sunlight for it, 
claiming he was under special instructions to make 
something sparkling and snappy. All through break- 
fast he coached me on the intricate details of the ac- 
tion. "Make him put up a stiff fight," he admonished 
through a mouthful of flapjack. "Of course he won't 
fight, 'cause he ain't that kind; but if you jerk and 
wiggle your pole just right it'll make it look like he 
was. That's what a real actor's for — making things 
look like they is when they ain't. Got me?" Then 
we went down and discovered that poor half-frozen 
fish with the eight-point alteration of the continuity 
of his back-bone. 

The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung, 
somewhat shark-like mouth, not unsuggestive of the 
new moon with its points turned downward. Roos' 
mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he 
found the condition the principal animal actor in his 
fish picture was in. But it was too late to give up 
now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish 
ready to hand, and with a bright sun shining on it. 
Roos tried osteopathy, applied chiropractics and 
Christian Science without much effect. Our "lead" 



142 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman's 
boomerang, whose shape he so nearly approximated. 
Then Andy wrought the miracle with a simple "lay- 
ing on of hands." What he really did was to thaw 
out the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it 
between his big, warm red Celtic paws ; but the effect 
was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big ling 
was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy 
dropped him into a bit of a boulder-locked pool he 
went charging back and forth at the rocky barriers 
like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his thank- 
fulness, and forthwith promised the restorer an extra 
rum ration that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but 
reminded him that we ought to be at the old ferry by 
night, where something even better than "thirty per 
overproof" rum would be on tap. It was indeed the 
morning of our great day. Stimulated by that inspir- 
ing thought, I prepared to outdo myself in the "fish 
picture," the "set" for which was now ready. 

Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made 
a long cast, registering "concentrated eagerness." 
Then Roos stopped cranking, and Andy brought the 
ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a 
snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We 
were careful not to hurt him, for Chester's directions 
had admonished especially against "showing brutal- 
ity".) When I had nursed him out to about where 
my opening cast had landed, Roos called "Action!" 
and started cranking again. Back and forth in wide 
sweeps he dashed, while I registered blended "eager- 
ness" and "determination," with frequent interpola- 
tions of "consternation" as carefully timed tugs (by 




W Oh 
Oh U 

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oi o 
^ w 

H 




< 
— ' w 



2g 

o p 
w 




ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAIIE 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 143 

myself) bent my shivering pole down to the water. 
When Roos had enough footage of "fighting," I 
brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down 
at him, registering "near triumph." Then I towed 
him ashore and Andy and Blackmore rushed in to 
help me land him. After much struggling (by our- 
selves) we brought him out on the beach. At this 
juncture I was supposed to grab the ling by the gills 
and hold him proudly aloft, registering "full triumph" 
the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd in, 
pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Black- 
more was then to assume an expression intended to 
convey the impression that this was the hardest fight- 
ing ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us 
were action perfect in our parts; but that miserable 
turn-tail of a ling — who had nothing to do but flop 
and register "indignant protest" — spoiled it all at 
the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream 
of "Rotten!" from Roos froze the action where it was. 
Then I noticed that what was supposed to be a gamy 
denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was hanging 
from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin — a bent 
coupling-pin at that, for he had resumed his former 
cold-storage curl. 

"Rotten!" shrieked Roos in a frenzy; "do it again!" 
But that was not to be. For the "chief actor" the cur- 
tain had rung down for good. "You must have 
played him too fierce," said Andy sympathetically. 
Blackmore was inclined to be frivolous. "P'raps he 
was trying to register 'Big Bend,' " said he. 

Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy 
and increasing roar from across the lake. Presently 



144 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into life again, 
but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a 
flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread 
from wall to wall of the rocky gorge, discharging to 
the bosky depths of the delta with a prodigious rum- 
bling that reverberated up and down the lake like 
heavy thunder. A moment later the flood had reached 
the shore, and out across the lucent green waters of 
the lake spread a broadening fan of yellow-brown. 
"I told you hell would be popping after that big 
slide," said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. "That's 
the backed-up stream breaking through." 

Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of 
the Columbia, backed up behind the obstructions 
which cause the long series of rapids between its out- 
let and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven 
miles long, according to the stage of water, and from 
one to two miles wide. Its downward set of current 
is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we ap- 
proached it after a three-mile pull from our camp at 
Middle River, appeared strikingly similar to the 
head of Surprise Rapids. Here, however, the tran- 
sition from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt. 
The surface of the lake was a-dance with the rip- 
ples kicked up by the crisp morning breeze, and blind- 
ingly bright where the facets of the tiny wavelets 
reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The 
shadowed depths, of the narrow gorge ahead was 
Stygian by contrast. Blackmore called my attention 
to the way the crests of the pines rimming the river a 
few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just 
about on the level with the surface of the lake. "When 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 145 

you see the tree-tops fall away like that," he said, 
standing up to take his final bearings for the opening 
run, "look out. It means there's water running down 
hill right ahead faster 'n any boat wants to put its nose 
in." The roar rolling up to us was not quite so deep- 
toned or thunderous as the challenging bellow of the 
first fall of Surprise; but it was more "permeative," 
as though the sources from which it came ran on with- 
out end. And that was just about the situation. We 
were sliding down to the intake of Kinbasket or "The 
Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids, one of the longest, if not 
the longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles 
on any of the great rivers of the world. 

From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of 
Canoe River is twenty-one miles. For the sixteen 
miles the tail of one rapid generally runs right into 
the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred 
and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile. 
For the last five miles there is less white water, but 
the current runs from eight to twelve miles an hour, 
with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is closely 
canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the 
whole run through in a single day, as there is no camp- 
ing place at any point. Cliffs and sharply-sloping 
boulder banks greatly complicate lining down and 
compel frequent crossings at points w^here a failure to 
land just right is pretty likely to leave things in a 
good deal of a mess. 

Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hun- 
dred yards of slap-banging white water, before com- 
ing to bank above a steep pitch where the river tore 
itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that 



146 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

seemed to block the whole channel. From Captain 
Armstrong's description, this was the exact point 
where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had 
occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause 
of his leaving the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next 
camp. Like pious pilgrims approaching the gate- 
way of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore, 
we looked at the place with much interest, not to say 
reverence. Blackmore was perhaps the least senti- 
mental of us. "I wouldn't try to run that next fall 
for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia," he 
said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line. 
Then we turned to on lining down the most accursed 
stretch of river boulders I ever had to do with. 

Barely submerged rocks crowding the bank com- 
pelled us to wade in and lift the boat ahead even 
oftener than in Surprise Rapids. Andy always took 
the lead in this, but time after time my help was nec- 
essary to throw her clear. For the first time since I 
had boated in Alaska a good many years previously, 
I began to know the numbing effects of icy water. 
The heavy exertion did a lot to keep the blood mov- 
ing, but three or four minutes standing with the water 
up to mid-thigh sent the chill right in to the marrow 
of the bones, even when sweat was running off the 
face in streams. That started a sort of dull ache in 
the leg bones that kept creeping higher and higher 
the longer one remained in the water. That ache was 
the worst part of it; the flesh became dead to sensa- 
tion very quickly, but that penetrating inward pain 
had more hurt in it every minute it was prolonged. 
It was bad enough in the legs, but when, submerged 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 147 

to the waist, as happened every now and then, the chill 
began to penetrate to the back-bone and stab the 
digestive organs, it became pretty trj'^ing. One rea- 
lized then what really short shrift a man would have 
trying to swim for more than four or five minutes 
even in calm water of this temperature. That was 
about the limit for heart action to continue with the 
cold striking in and numbing the veins and arteries, a 
doctor had told Blackmore, and this seemed reasona- 
ble. Andy was repeatedly sick at the stomach after 
he had been wet for long above the waist. My own 
qualms were rather less severe (doubtless because I 
was exposed rather less), but I found myself very 
weak and unsteady after every immersion. A liberal 
use of rum would undoubtedly have been of some help 
for a while, but Blackmore was adamant against start- 
ing in on it as long as there was any bad water ahead. 
And as there was nothing but bad water ahead, 
this meant that — in one sense at least — we were a "dry 
ship." 

I shall not endeavour to trace in detail our painful 
progress down "Twenty-One-Mile." Indeed, I could 
not do so even if I wanted, for the very good reason 
that my hands were so full helping with the boat all 
the way that I had no time to make notes, and even 
my mental record — usually fairly dependable — is 
hopelessly jumbled. Even Blackmore became con- 
siderably mixed at times. At the first four or five 
rifflles below the lake he called the turn correctly, 
landing, lining, crossing and running just where he 
should have done so. Then his mind-map became 
less clear. Twice he lined riffles which it presently 



148 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

became plain we could have run, and then he all but 
failed to land above one where a well-masked "souse- 
hole" would have gulped the boat in one mouthful. 

It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had 
never taken the trouble of making a rough chart of 
this portion of the river, so that he could be quite 
sure what was ahead. He said that the idea was a 
good one, and that it had often occurred to him. 
There were several reasons why he had never carried 
it out. One was, that he was always so mad when he 
was going down "Twenty-One-Mile"- that he couldn't 
see straight, let alone write and draw straight. This 
meant that the chart would be of no use to him, even 
if some one else made it — unless, of course, he brought 
the maker along to interpret it. The main deterrent, 
however, had been the fact that he had always sworn 
each passage should be his last, so that (according to 
his frame of mind of the moment) there would be no 
use for the chart even if he could have seen straight 
enough to make it, and to read it after it had been 
made. 

The scenery — so far as I recall it — was grand be- 
yond words to describe. Cliff fronted cliff, with a 
jagged ribbon of violet-purple sky between. Every 
few hundred yards creeks broke through the moun- 
tain walls and came cascading into the river over their 
spreading boulder "fans." Framed in the narrow 
notches from which they sprang appeared transient 
visions of sun-dazzled peaks and glaciers towering 
above wedge-shaped valleys swimming full of lilac 
mist. I saw these things, floating by like double 
strips of movie film, only when we were running in 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 149 

the current ; when hning I was aware of httle beyond 
the red hne of the gunwale which I grasped, the im- 
minent loom of Andy's grey-shirted shoulder next 
me, and the foam-flecked swirl of liquefied glacier 
enfolding my legs and swiftly converting them to 
stumpy icicles. 

There was one comfort, though. The farther down 
river we worked away from the lake, the shorter be- 
came the stretches of lining and the longer the rapids 
that were runnable. That accelerated our progress 
materially, but even so Blackmore did not reckon that 
there was time to stop for pictures, or even for lunch. 
We were still well up to schedule, but he was anxious 
to work on a good margin in the event of the always- 
to-be-expected "unexpected." It was along toward 
three in the afternoon that, after completing a partic- 
ularly nasty bit of lining a mile or two above the 
mouth of Yellow Creek, he came over and slapped 
me on the back. "That finishes it for the day, young 
man," he cried gaily. "We can turn loose and run the 
rest of it now, and we'll do it hell sizzling fast. It may 
also rejoice you to know that all the lining left for 
the whole trip is a couple of hundred yards at 'Rock 
Slide' and Death Rapids. All aboard for the Feriy !" 

All of a sudden life had become a blessed thing 
again. For the first time I became aware that there 
were birds singing in the trees, flowers blooming in 
the protected shelves above high-water-mark, and 
maiden-hair ferns festooning the dripping grottoes of 
the cliffs. Dumping the water from our boots, Andy 
and I resumed our oars and swung the boat right out 
into the middle of the current. The first rapid we hit 



150 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was a vicious side-winder, shaped like a letter "S," 
with overhanging cliffs playing battledore-and-shut- 
tlecock with the river at the bends. Blackmore said 
he would have lined it if the water had been two feet 
lower; as it was now we would get wetter trying to 
worry a boat round the cliffs than in slashing through. 
We got quite wet enough as it was. The rocks were 
not hard to avoid, but banging almost side-on into the 
great back-curving combers thrown off by the cliffs 
was just a bit terrifying. Slammed back and forth 
at express-train speed, with nothing but those roaring 
open-faced waves buffeting against the cliffs, was 
somewhat suggestive of the sensation you get from a 
quick double-bank in a big biplane. Only it was 
wetter — much wetter. It took Blackmore ten min- 
utes of hard bailing to get rid of the splashage. 

The succeeding rapids, though no less swift, were 
straighter, and easier — and dryer. Roos, perched up 
in the bow, announced that all was over but the dig- 
ging, and started to sing "Old Green River." Andy 
and I joined in lustily, and even Blackmore (though 
a lip-reader would have sworn he was mimibling over 
a rosary) claimed to be singing. Exultant as we all 
were over the prize so nearly within our grasp, we 
must have put a world of feeling into that heart- 
stirring chorus. 

"I was drifting down the old Green River 
On the good ship RocTi-and-Rye — 
I drifted too far ; 
I got stuck on the bar ; 
I was out there alone. 
Wishing that I were home — 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 151 

The Captain was lost, with all of the crew, 
So that there was no-thing left to do ; 

And I had to drink the whole Green River dry-igh 

To get back ho-ohm to you-oo-ou !" 

Smoother and smoother became the going, and 
then — rather unexpectedly, it seemed to me — the 
water began to slacken its dizzy speed. Blackmore 
appeared considerably puzzled over it, I thought. 
Roos, turning sentimental, had started singing a song 
that he had learned from a phonograph, and in which, 
therefore, appeared numerous hiati. 

"Now I know da-da-da-da-da — 
Now I know the reason why — 

Da-da-da-da da-da-da-daah — 

Now I know, yes, now I know! 
Da-da-da, my heart. ..." 

Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail 
floated back to him, and then broke into the next 
"da-da" with a sudden growl. "I say, young feller,'* 
he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water 
with his paddle blade; "if you know so geesly much, 
I'm wondering if you'd mind loosening up on one or 
two things that have got me buffaloed. First place, 
do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?" 
"Not at all, sir," quavered Roos, who seemed rather 
fearful of an impending call-down. "I don't, huh?" 
went on the growl. "Then please tell me why what 
I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like 
slack water, and why I think I hear a roar coming 
round the next bend." "But the water is slack," pro- 



152 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

tested Roos, "and I've heard that roar for five min- 
utes myself. Just another rapid, isn't it? The water 
always . . ." 

"Rot!" roared the veteran. "There ain't no fall 
with a rip -raring thunder like that 'tween Yellow 
Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you ! I must ha' 
been doped after all." 

Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble 
assailed us in a raw, rough wave of savage sound as 
we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was not suffi- 
ciently confident of his "dope theory" to care to get 
any nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance. 
Landing a hundred yards above where a white "eye- 
lash" of up-flipped water showed above a line of big 
rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on 
foot. Presently all that had occurred was written 
clear for one who knew the way of a slide with a 
river, and the way of a river with a slide, to read as 
on the page of a book. 

"A new rapid, and a whale at that!" gasped Black- 
more in astonishment; "the first one that's ever formed 
on the Columbia in my time!" 

The amazing thing that had happened was this: 
Sometime in the spring, a landslide of enormous size, 
doubtless started by an avalanche of snow far up in 
the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain 
out and come down all the way across the river. As 
the pines were hurled backward for a couple of hun- 
dred feet above the river on the right or Rocky Moun- 
tain bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam 
formed had averaged considerably more than that in 
height. As this would have backed up the river for 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 153 

at least ten or twelve miles, it is probable that the lake 
formed must have been rising for a number of days 
before it flowed over the top of the barrier and began 
to sluice it away. On an incalculably larger scale, it 
was just the sort of thing we had heard and seen hap- 
pening on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket 
Lake camp. Not the least remarkable thing in con- 
nection with the stupendous convulsion was the fact 
that a large creek was flowing directly down the great 
gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the 
rapid which was left when the dam had been washed 
away. Blackmore was quite positive that there had 
been no creek at this point the last time he was there. 
It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the 
slide, in removing a considerable section of mountain 
wall, had opened a new line of drainage for some little 
valley in the high Selkirks. 

It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native 
rock left after the earth had been sluiced out of the 
dam that remained to form the unexpected rapid 
which now confronted us. They had not yet been 
worn smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and 
it was this fact, doubtless, that gave the cascade tum- 
bling through and over them such a raw, raucous 
roar. 

The solution of the mystery of the appearance of 
the rapid was only an incident compared with the 
problem of how to pass it. There was a compara- 
tively straight channel, but there was no possibility 
that the boat could live in the huge rollers that bil- 
lowed down the middle of it. Just to the right of the 
middle there was a smoother chute which looked bet- 



154 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ter — provided the boat could be kept to it. Black- 
more said that it looked like too much of a risk, and 
decided to try to line down the right bank — the one 
on which we had landed. As the river walls were too 
steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be por- 
taged, the boat would have to go through loaded. 

A big up-rooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet 
over the river and with its under limbs swept by the 
water, seemed likely to prove our worst difficulty, and 
I am inclined to believe it would have held us up in 
the end, even after we reached it. As things turned 
out, however, it troubled us not a whit, for the boat 
never got down that far. Right at the head of the 
rapid her bows jammed between two submerged 
boulders about ten feet from the bank, and there she 
stuck. As it was quickly evident that it was out of the 
question to lift her on through, it now became a prob- 
lem of working her back up-stream out of the jaws 
that held her. But with the fuU force of the current 
driving her tighter between the rocks, she now refused 
to budge even in the direction from which she had 
come. 

As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy 
and I, mid-waist deep in the icy water, spent trying to 
work that hulking red boat loose so that Blackmore 
could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start 
takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of 
the whole trip. After Andy's experience in Surprise 
Rapids, neither of us was inclined to throw his whole 
weight into a hft that might leave him overbalanced 
when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we 
pulled and hauled and cursed (I should hate to have 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 155 

to record all we said about the ancestry of the 
river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat), 
while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with 
every passing minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump 
and whittling, furnished no help but some slight diver- 
sion. When he started singing "Old Green River" 
just after I had slipped and soused my head in the 
current, I stopped tugging at the boat for long 
enough to wade out and shy a stone at him. "Green 
River" ^ was all right in its place, but its place was 
swirling against the inside of the ribs, not the outside. 
Roos had the cheek to pick the rock up out of his lap 
and heave it back at me — but with an aim less certain 
than my own. A few minutes later he called out to 
Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, add- 
ing that if it had not, he would like to do his em- 
ployer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming it after 
him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a 
moment to roar back that no rapid was ever named 
after a man unless he had been "drownded" in it. 
"We'll name this one after you if you'll do the need- 
ful," he growled as an afterthought, throwing his 
weight again onto his line. That tickled Andy and 
me so mightily that we gave a prodigious heave in 
all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. 
Gaining the bank with little trouble, we joined Black- 
more and helped him haul her up by line into slower 
water. 

"No good lining," the "Skipper" announced decid- 

' For the benefit of those Avho have forgotten, or may never have 
known, I will state that " Green River " was the name of a brand 
of whisky consimied by ancient Americans with considerable gusto. 
L. R. F. 



156 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

edly, as we sat down to rest for a spell; "I'm going to 
drive her straight through." Chilled, weary and 
dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that 
would have welcomed jumping into the rapid with a 
stone tied to my neck rather than go back to the half- 
submerged wading and Hfting. Roos said he hated 
to risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it 
over the cliff and rejoin us below the rapid. Andy 
said he was quite game to pull his oar for a run if we 
had to, but that he would first like to try lining down 
the opposite bank. He thought we' could make it 
there, and he had just a bit of a doubt about what 
might happen in mid-river. That was reasonable 
enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the 
other side. 

Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in 
the same trouble as on the right bank. Directly off 
the mouth of the stream that came down from the 
slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between 
two submerged rocks, defying our every attempt to 
lift it over. Blackmore was becoming impatient 
again, and was just ready to give up and run, when 
Andy, with the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a 
lever, rolled one of the boulders aside and cleared the 
way. Five minutes later we had completed lining 
down and were pushing off for the final run to the 
Ferry. No more "mystery rapids" cropped up to 
disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep, swift water, 
we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. 
A part of the distance was through the rocky-walled 
Red Canyon, one of the grandest scenic bits of the 
Bend, At one point Blackmore showed us a sheer- 





OUR WETTEST CAMF AT KINUASKET LAKE (above) 
THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER ( bclow) 




WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE { above) 

THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES 
AND PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM {center) 

LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (below) 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 157 

sided rock island, on which he said he had once found 
the graves of two white men, with an inscription so 
worn as to be indecipherable. He thought they were 
probably those of miners lost during the Cariboo 
gold-field excitement of the middle of the last century, 
or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay voyageurs of a 
century or more back. There were many unidenti- 
fied graves all the way round the Bend, he said. 

The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we 
neared our destination, and the low-hanging western 
sun had found a gap in the Selkirks through whi^h it 
was pouring its level rays to flood with a rich amber 
light the low wooded benches at the abandoned cross- 
ing. The old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like 
the Statue of Liberty, bathing its head in the golden 
light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to a bea- 
con, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar 
flanking an eddy almost directly under the rusting 
cable. We would cross later to spend the night in a 
trapper's cabin on the opposite bank, he said ; as there 
was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, 
he had come there at once so as to get down to busi- 
ness without delay. 

Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did 
a thing which I have been greatly gratified that I did 
do — right then and there. I drew my companions 
close to me and assured them that I had made up my 
mind to divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and 
And}^ should have a gallon apiece, and Roos a quart. 
(I scaled down the latter's share sharply, partly be- 
cause he had thrown tliat stone back at me, and the 
nerve of it rankled, and partly — I must confess — out 



158 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of "professional jealousy." "Stars" and "Directors" 
never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and divide 
with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell 
them that I had high hopes that Armstrong would 
soften in the end and let me keep it all to take home. 
After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my 
hand with gratitude, we set to work, each in his own 
way. 

The spot was readily located the moment we took 
the compass bearing. Pacing off was quite unneces- 
sary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped outcrop of 
bedrock, where a man who knew about what was 
there could feel his way and claw up the treasure in 
the dark. It was an "inevitable" hiding place, just as 
Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan an 
inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in 
our own way. Blackmore and Andy found a couple 
of rusty shovels and went to digging; Roos climbed 
up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them 
digging ; I climbed up on the old shack to take a pic- 
ture of Roos taking a picture of them digging. Noth- 
ing was omitted calculated to preserve historical 
accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war 
when a German archcEological mission had inaugu- 
rated excavation for Phoenician antiquities, and so 
was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind required. 

The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where 
Andy and Blackmore were making the dirt fly like a 
pair of Airedales digging out a badger. The ground 
was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels ; it ought 
to be only the matter of minutes now. The "show- 
ings" were good. They had akeady unearthed a 



KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS 159 

glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron. "Gor- 
geous stroke of luck for us that chap, K , hit the 

stuff so hard up at Kinbasket," I murmured ecstati- 
cally. Blackmore started and straightened up like a 
man hit with a steel bullet. "What was that name 

again?" he gasped. "K ," I replied wonderingly; 

"some kind of a Swede, I believe Armstrong said. 
But what difference does his name make as long 
as . . ." 

Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and 
climbed stiffly up after it before he replied. When he 
spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing, as though 
draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. "Difference, 
boy! All the difference between hell and happiness. 

About two years ago K dropped out of sight 

from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone 
somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he 
died in the hospital of the 'D. T's.' " 

Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by 
the disaster) was the only one who had the strength 
to speak. It seemed that he had studied Latin in the 
high school. ''Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti/* 
was what he said. Never in all the voyage did he 
speak so much to the point. 

Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic 
words were solemnly pronounced. "Young feller," 
he growled, "I don't savvy what the last part of that 
drug-store lingo you're spitting means; but you're 
dead right about the first part. Sick is sure the word." 

We spent the night in an empty trapper's cabin 
across the river. Charity forbids that I lift the cur- 
tain of the house of mourning. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ni. RUNNING THE BEND 

Boat Encampment to Revelstohe 

We were now close to the historic Boat Encamp- 
ment, where at last our course would join with that 
followed by the early voyageurs and ^explorers. No 
point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even 
Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the 
imagination than this tiny patch of silt-covered over- 
flow flat which has been formed by the erosive action 
of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of three 
great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies, 
Selkirks and the Gold Range, carried by the Colum- 
bia, Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and mingle to form 
the remarkable halting place, where the east and west- 
bound pioneering traffic of a century stopped to 
gather breath for the next stage of its journey. 

Before pushing off from the Ferry on the morning 
of October seventh I dug out from my luggage a copy 
of a report written in 1881 by Lieutenant Thomas W. 
Symons, U. S. A., on the navigation of the Upper 
Columbia. This was chiefly concerned with that part 
of the river between the International Boundary and 
the mouth of the Snake, but Lieutenant Symons had 
made a long and exhaustive study of the whole Colum- 
bia Basin, and his geographical description of the 
three rivers which unite at Boat Encampment is so 

160 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 161 

succinct and yet so comprehensive that I am impelled 
to make a liberal quotation from it here. Of the great 
assistance I had from Lieutenant Symons' invaluable 
report when I came to the passage of that part of the 
river covered by his remarkable voyage of forty years 
ago I shall write later. 

"Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of tlie 
north, a little above tlie fifty-second parallel of latitude, 
seemingly surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow- 
clad mountains, and nestled down among the lower and 
nearer cedar-mantled hills, there lies a narrow valley where 
three streams meet and blend their Avaters, one coming from 
the southeast, one from the northwest, and one from the 
east. The principal one of these streams is the one from the 
southeast , . . and is the headwater stream, and bears the 
name of the Columbia. 

"The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch 
of the Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of 
latitude, and is known among the traders and voyageurs as 
Canoe River, from the excellence of the barks obtained on 
its banks for canoe building. This is a small river, forty 
yards wide at its mouth, flowing through a densely timbered 
valley in which the trees overhang the stream to such an 
extent as almost to shut it out from the light of heaven. . , . 
"Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the 
smallest and the most remarkable of them, is the one which 
enters from the east. It has its source in the very heart of 
the Rocky Mountains and flows through a tremendous cleft 
in the main range between two of its loftiest peaks. Mounts 
Brown and Hooker. Just underneath these giant mountains, 
on the divide known as 'The Height of Land,' lie two small 
lakes, each about thirty yards in diameter, and which are 
only a few yards from each other. One has its outlet to the 



162 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

west, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia ; the other has 
its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch of the 
Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the 
Arctic Ocean. 

"The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is 
called 'The Committee's Punchbowl,' and the nabobs of the 
fur trade always treated their companions to a bucket of 
punch when this point was reached, if they had the ingredients 
from which to make it, and they usually had. 

"The pass across the mountains by the Portage River, 
'The Committee's Punchbowl' and Whirlpool River, known 
as the Athabaska Pass, was for many yea'rs the route of the 
British fur traders in going from one side of the Rocky 
Mountains to the other. This route is far from being an 
easy one, and a description of the difficulties, dangers and 
discomforts of a trip over it will certainly deter any one from 
making the journey for pleasure. A great part of the way 
the traveller has to wade up to his middle in the icy waters 
of Portage River. The journey had to be made in the spring 
before the summer thaws and rains set in, or in the autumn 
after severe cold weather had locked up the mountain drain- 
age. During the summer the stream becomes an impetuous 
impassable mountain torrent." 

Considering that Lieutenant Symons had never 
traversed the Big Bend nor the Athabaska Pass, this 
description (which must have been written from his 
careful readings of the diaries of the old voyageurs) 
is a remarkable one. It is not only accurate topo- 
graphically and geographically, but it has an "atmos- 
phere" which one who does know this region at first 
hand will be quick to appreciate. How and when the 
stream which he and the men before him called Por- 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 163 

tage River came to have its name changed to Wood, 
I have not been able to learn. 

A mile below the Ferry Blackmore called my atten- 
tion to a sharp wedge of brown-black mountain which 
appeared to form the left wall of the river a short way 
ahead. That lofty out-thrust of rock, he said, was the 
extreme northern end of the Selkirk Range. The 
Columbia, after receiving the waters of Wood and 
Canoe rivers, looped right round this cape and started 
flowing south, but with the massif of the Selkirks still 
forming its left bank. But the Rockies, which had 
formed its right bank all the way from its source, 
were now left behind, and their place was taken by 
the almost equally lofty Gold Range, which drained 
east to the Columbia and west to the Thompson. 

The Columbia doubles back from north to south at 
an astonishingly sharp angle, — as river bends go, that 
is. Picture mentally Madison Square, New York. 
Now suppose the Columbia to flow north on Broad- 
way, bend round the Flatiron Building (which repre- 
sents the Selkirks) , and then flow south down Fifth 
avenue. Then East Twenty-Third Street would 
represent Wood River, and North Broadway, Canoe 
River. Now forget all the other streets and imagine 
the buildings of Madison Square as ten to twelve 
thousand-feet-high mountains. And there you have 
a model of the apex of the Big Bend of the Columbia. 
A milky grey-green flood — straight glacier water if 
there ever was such — staining the clear stream of the 
Columbia marked the mouth of Wood River, and we 
pulled in for a brief glimpse in passing of what had 
once been Boat Encampment. I had broken my ther- 



164 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

mometer at Kinbasket Lake, so I could not take the 
temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all 
doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a finger- 
tip in. What the ascent to Athabaska Pass must 
have been may be judged from this description by 
Alexander Ross — one of the original Astoria party — 
written over a hundred years ago. 

"Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one 
side by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great 
height, covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their 
tops down to the water's edge ; and on the other a beach 
comparatively low, but studded in an irregular manner with 
standing and fallen trees, rocks and ice, and full of drift- 
wood, over which the torrent everywhere rushes with such 
irresistible impetuosity that very few would dare to adven- 
ture themselves in the stream. Let him again imagine a 
rapid river descending from some great height, filling up the 
whole channel between the rocky precipices on the south, and 
the no less dangerous barrier on the north ; and, lastly, let 
him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on foot 
against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all 
its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the 
middle in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be 
overcome in crossing the Rocky Mountains." 

I have been able to learn nothing of records which 
would indicate that any of the early explorers or voy- 
ageurs traversed that portion of the Columbia down 
which we had just come. David Thompson, who is 
credited with being the first man to travel the Colum- 
bia to the sea, although he spent one winter at the foot 
of Lake Windermere, appears to have made his down- 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 165 

river push-off from Boat Encampment. Mr. Basil 
G. Hamilton, of Invermere, sends me an authoritative 
note on this point, based on Thompson's own journal. 
From this it appears that the great astronomer-ex- 
plorer crossed the Rockies by Athabaska Pass and 
came down to what has since been known by the name 
of Boat Encampment in March, 1811. Having built 
himself a hut, he made preparation for a trip down the 
Cokmibia, by which he hoped to reach the mouth in 
advance of either of the Astor parties, and thus be able 
to lay claim to the whole region traversed in the name 
of the Northwest Company. He writes: "We first 
tried to get birch rind wherewith to make our trip to 
the Pacific Ocean, but without finding any even thick 
enough to make a dish. So we split out thin boards 
of cedar wood, about six inches in breadth, and built 
a canoe twenty-five feet in length and fifty inches in 
breadth, of the same form as a common canoe. As 
we had no nails we sewed the boards to each other 
round the timbers, making use of the fine roots of the 
pine which we split." 

This ingeniously constructed but precarious craft 
was finished on the sixteenth of April, and Thomp- 
son's party embarked in it on the seventeenth. Mr. 
Plamilton doubts if this was the same craft in which 
they finally reached Astoria. From my own knowl- 
edge of what lies between I am very much inclined to 
agree with him. Certainly no boat of the construc- 
tion described could have lasted even to the Arrow 
Lakes without much patching, and if a boat seeming 
on the lines of the original really reached the Pacific, 
it must have been many times renewed in the course of 



166 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thomp- 
son's remarkable journey, so far as its original object 
was concerned, was a failure. He reached the mouth 
of the Columbia well in advance of Astor's land party, 
but only to find the New Yorker fur-trader's expedi- 
tion by way of Cape Horn and Hawaii already in 
occupation. 

Boat Encampment of to-day is neither picturesque 
nor interesting; indeed, there are several camp-sites 
at the Bend that one would choose in preference to 
that rather damp patch of brush-covered, treeless 
clearing. All that I found in the way of relics of the 
past were some huge cedar stumps, ahnost covered 
with silt, and the remains of a demolished batteau. I 
salved a crude oar-lock from the latter to carry as a 
mascot for my down-river trip. As a mascot it served 
me very well, everything considered; though it did 
get me in rather bad once when I tried to use it for an 
oar-lock. 

Before the sparkling jade-green stream of the 
Columbia had entirely quenched the milky flow of 
Wood River, the chocolate-brown torrent of Canoe 
River came pouring in to mess things up anew. The 
swift northern affluent, greatly swelled by the recent 
rains, was in flood, and at the moment appeared to be 
discharging a flow almost if not quite equal to that 
of the main river. For a considerable distance the 
waters of the right side of the augmented river re- 
tained their rich cinnamon tint, and it was not until 
a brisk stretch of rapid a mile below the Bend got in 
its cocktail-shaker action that the two streams 
became thoroughly blended. Then the former crys- 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 167 

talline clearness of the Columbia was a thing of the 
past. It was still far from being a muddy river. 
There was still more of green than of brown in its 
waters, but they were dully translucent where they 
had been brilliantly transparent. Not until the hun- 
dred-mile-long settling-basin of the Arrow Lakes 
allowed the sediment to deposit did the old emerald- 
bright sparkle come back again. 

A couple of quick rifle shots from the left bank set 
the echoes ringing just after we had passed Canoe 
River, and Blackmore turned in to where a man and 
dog were standing in front of an extremely pictur- 
esquely located log cabin. It proved to be a French- 
Canadian half-breed trapper called Alphonse Ed- 
munds. His interest in us was purely social, and 
after a five minutes' yarn we pulled on. Blackmore 
said the chap lived in Golden, and that to avoid the 
dreaded run down through Surprise and Kinbasket 
rapids, he was in the habit of going a couple of hun- 
dred miles by the C. P. R. to Kamloops, thence north 
for a hundred miles or more by the Canadian North- 
ern, thence by pack-train a considerable distance over 
the divide to the head of Canoe River, and finally 
down the latter by boat to the Bend, where he did his 
winter trapping. This was about four times the dis- 
tance as by the direct route down the Columbia, and 
probably at least quadrupled time and expense. It 
threw an illuminative side-light on the way some of the 
natives regarded the upper half of the Big Bend. 

The river was deeper now, but still plugged along 
at near to the ten-miles-an-hour it had averaged from 
the foot of Kinbasket Rapids. As the western slopes 



168 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of the Selkirks were considerably more extensive than 
the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that 
side was proportionately greater. Cascades and cat- 
aracts came tmnbling in every few hundred yards, and 
every mile or two, from one side or the other, a consid- 
erable creek would pour down over its spreading 
boulder "fan." We landed at twelve-thirty and 
cooked our lunch on the stove of a perfect beauty of a 
trapper's cabin near the mouth of Mica Creek. The 
trapper had already begun getting in his winter grub, 
but was away at the moment. The whole place was as 
clean as a Dutch kitchen. A recent shift of channel 
by the fickle-minded Mica Creek had undermined 
almost to the door of this snug little home, and Andy 
reckoned it would go down river on the next spring 
rise. 

We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two 
hours, tying up for the night at a well-built Govern- 
ment cabin three miles below Big Mouth Creek. It 
was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper 
named Johnston. He was out running his trap-lines 
when we arrived, but came back in time to be our 
guest for dinner. He made one rather important con- 
tribution to the menu — a "mulligan," the piece de 
resistance of which, so he claimed, was a mud-hen he 
had winged with his revolver that morning. There 
were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish 
stew already, and — much to the disgust of Roos and 
myself, who didn't fancy eating mud-hen — Andy 
dumped into it just about everything he had been 
cooking except the prunes. That's the proper caper 
with "mulligans," and they are very good, too, unless 




LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (above) 
ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF 

ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (centre) 

THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST, 
AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS {beloiv) 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 169 

some one of the makings chances to be out of your 
line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen — fish- 
eating mud-hen ! As we were sort of company, Roos 
and I put on the best faces we could and filled up on 
prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other 
three had cleaned out the "mulligan" can that Andy 
chanced to mention that "mud-hen" was the popularly 
accepted euphemism for grouse shot out of season! 

Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked "trap- 
per stuff" all evening — tricks for tempting marten, 
how to prevent the pesky wolverine from robbing 
traps, "stink-baits," prices, and the prospects for 
beaver when it again became lawful to take them. 
Johnston was a typical Swede, with little apparent 
regard for his physical strength if money could be 
made by drawing upon it. The previous season he 
had had to sleep out in his blankets many nights while 
covering his lines, and he counted himself lucky that 
this year he had two or three rough cabins for shelter. 
He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the 
grub that cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in. 
He was already looking a bit drawn, and Blackmore 
said the next morning that he would be more or less 
of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the 
previous season. The hardships these trappers en- 
dure is something quite beyond the comprehension 
of any one who has not been with them. A city man, 
a farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare 
with it. 

We were a mile down stream the next morning 
before Blackmore discovered that his rifle had been 
left in Johnston's cabin, and it took him an hour of 



170 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover 
it. The river was still rising from the rains, and the 
current swift with occasional rapids. Blackmore 
approached the head of Gordon Rapids (named, of 
course, from a man of that name who had lost his life 
there) with considerable caution. He intended to 
run them, he said, but the convergence of currents 
threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be taken 
liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved 
when he found that the high water made it 
possible to avoid the main rapid by a: swift but com- 
paratively clear back-channel. We had a good view 
of the riffle from below when we swung back into the 
main channel. It was certainly a vicious tumble of 
wild white water, and even with our considerable free- 
board it would have been a sloppy run. I should 
have been very reluctant to go into it all with a smaller 
boat. 

Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the 
scenery in this part of the Bend was quite equal to 
the finest through which we had passed above Canoe 
River. The steady drizzle which had now set in, 
however, made pictures out of the question. This did 
not deter Roos from looking for "location." He was 
under special instructions to make some effective 
camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suita- 
ble place ever since we started. This day he found 
what he wanted. Shooting down a swift, rough rapid 
shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot 
past the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white 
shimmer of a big waterfall just discernible in its 
dusky depths. Almost immediately opposite a rocky 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 171 

point jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly car- 
peted with moss and grass, and bright with the reds 
and yellows of patches of late flowers. At its base 
was an almost perfect circle of towering cedars and 
sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out in 
fretwork against the pale purple mists filling the 
depths of a wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley be- 
hind. There were glaciers and peaks hanging giddily 
above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds. 

In response to Roos' glad "Eureka!" Blackmore 
threw the boat's head sharply toward the left bank, 
and hard pulling just won us the edge of the eddy. 
Missing that, we would have run on into the rough- 
and-tumble of Twelve-lNIile Rapids, where (as we 
found the next day) there was no landing for another 
half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close 
range than from the river, and Roos announced deci- 
sively that we were not going to stir from there until 
the sun came to give him light for his camp shots. 
Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After 
that, to the best of my recollection, we did not see the 
sun again until we crossed over to the U. S. A. many- 
days later. 

Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture, 
and I have since heard that it was most favourably 
reported upon from the studio. Setting up on the 
end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat 
ran down the rapid (we had had to line back above 
for this, of course) and floundered through the swirls 
and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge 
and its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and 
packing our outfit up the bank, trees were felled, 



172 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

boughs cut and spread and the tent set up. Finally, 
we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. 
I could tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted 
to lend a Mack Sennett "custard-pie" touch by hav- 
ing some one smear some one else in the face with a 
mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed. 
Qualified "smearers" there were in plenty — Andy and 
Blackmore were wood-choppers and I was an ex- 
pitcher and shot-putter, — but the designation of a 
"smear-ee" was quite another matter. Roos did well 
to stop where he did. 

Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near 
the head of "Twelve-Mile," and put Roos ashore on 
the right bank for a shot as we ran through. We had 
expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the 
rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as 
spectacular as possible, threw the boat right into the 
midst of the white stuff. There was a good deal of 
'soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much 
weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far 
over toward the left bank that it was impossible to 
pull into the eddy we had hoped to make. Andy and 
I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we 
could reach slack water near the left bank, and by 
then we were a quarter of a mile below the foot of the 
rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over 
the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another 
mile in fast water brought us to the head of Rock 
Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right bank for 
our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend. 

The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole 
Columbia between Lake Windermere and the Pacific. 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 173 

An almost perpendicular mountainside has been en- 
croaching on the river here for many years, possibly 
damming it all the way across at times. From the 
Slide to the precipitous left bank there is an average 
channel seventy feet in width, through which the 
river rushes with tremendous velocity over and be- 
tween enormous sharp-edged boulders. This pours 
into a cauldron-like eddy at a right-angled bend, and 
over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the 
river spills into another narrow chute to form the 
Dalles dcs Moris of accursed memory. I know of no 
place on the upper half of the Bend where the river 
is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles, 
just below the American line, are about a hundred 
and forty feet across in their narrowest part, and the 
Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are slightly wider. 
Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids 
have side channels of less than a hundred feet, but the 
main channels are much broader. Save only the 
Dalles des Morts (which are really its continuation) 
the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the 
river. 

It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock 
Slide, and the consequent constriction of the river at 
that point, are of comparatively recent occurrence, 
almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the 
diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most 
of the earlier Columbian history is based, I can find 
no mention of anything of the kind at this point, a 
location readily identifiable because of its proximity 
to the Dalles des Morts, wliich they all mention. But 
in Ross' record I do find this significant passage ; 



174 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"A little after starting {from the Dalles des Morts) we 
backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring 
a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after 
shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white 
sheet onto a broad, flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms 
the first step ; then upon a second, some ten feet lower down, 
and lastly, on a third, somewhat lower. It then enters a 
subterranean vault, formed at the mouth like a funnel, and 
after passing through this funnel it again issues forth with 
a noise like distant thunder. After falling over another step 
it meets the front of a bold rock, which repulses back the 
water with such violence as to keep it whirling around in 
a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing of a shelving 
cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back the rising 
spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of the rain- 
bow. The creek then enters the Columbia." 

On the left bank, immediately above the Dalles des 
Morts, an extremely beautiful little waterfall leaps 
into the river from the cliffs, but neither this (as will 
readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any 
other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the 
Columbia, bears the least suggestion of a resem- 
blance to the remarkable cataract Ross so strikingly 
describes. But I did see a very sizable stream of 
water cascading right down the middle of the great 
rock slide, and at a point which might very well coin- 
cide with that at which Ross saw his "stairway-and- 
tunnel" phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possi- 
ble that the latter should have undermined the cliff 
over and through which it was tumbling, precipitating 
it into the river and forming the Rock Slide of the 
present day? 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 175 

The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a 
rough, smashing cascade that looked quite capable 
of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a hundred 
feet ; but to the right of it the water was considerably 
better. Blackmore said the chances would be all in 
favour of running it safely, hut, if anything at all 
went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar, for 
instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy 
at the bend; and if we missed the eddy — Death Rap- 
ids ! He didn't seem to think any further elucidation 
was necessary. It would be best to line the whole way 
down, he said. 

On account of the considerable depth of water 
right up to the banks, the boat struck on the rocks 
rather less than usual; but the clamber over the 
jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of 
the kind we encountered. I did get a bit of a duck 
here, though, but it was not near to being anything 
serious, and the sequel was rather amusing. Losing 
my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had 
to give Andy a lift with the boat, I floundered for a 
few strokes, kicked into an eddy and climbed out. 

Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with 
empty pockets, I had taken the precaution of button- 
ing mine securely down before starting in to line. 
The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the klep- 
tomaniacal river current, and I came out with the 
contents of my pocket wet but intact. But there was 
a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding 
breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an 
ancient pair of East Indian jjodpurs I was wearing 
(without leggings, of course), and age and rough 



176 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I 
caught this somewhere on the boat without noting it 
in my excitement; or it is even possible the current 
did tear it off. There was nothing especially remark- 
able about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore 
and Andy always solemnly declared that the geesly 
river, baulked by my buttons of its designs on the 
contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with 
my whole pair of pants ! If that was so, it had its way 
in the end. Before I set out on the second leg of my 
voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes, I threw 
the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair 
of jodpurs as a propitiatory offering. 

The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audi- 
ble above the higher-keyed grind of Rock Slide as 
we worked down toward the head of the intervening 
eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister 
records on the Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has 
undoubtedly been the one to draw to itself the 
greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives 
they have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the 
fact that this swift, narrow chute of round-topped 
rollers is many times worse than it looks, especially to 
a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there 
have been many such numbered among its victims. 
There are two or three places in Surprise Rapids, and 
one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest green- 
horn would know better than to try to run; Death 
Rapids it is conceivable that a novice might try, just 
as many of them have, and to their cost. However, it 
is probable that the greatest number that have died 
here were comparatively experienced men who were 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 177 

sucked into the death-chute in spite of themselves. 
Of such was made up the party whose tragic fate 
gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the 
original Astorians, tells the story, and the account of 
it I am setting down here is slightly abridged from his 
original narrative. 

On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox's party of 
twenty-three left Fort George (originally and subsequently 
Astoria) to ascend the Columbia and cross the Rockies by 
the Athabaska Pass, en route Montreal. On the twenty- 
seventh of May they arrived at Boat Encampment after the 
most severe labours in dragging their boats up the rapids and 
making their way along the rocky shores. Seven men of the 
party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were unable 
to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the 
best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to 
return down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post 
near the mouth of the river of that name. They reached 
the place which has since borne the name of Dalles des Morts 
without trouble. There, in passing their canoe down over the 
rapids with a light cod line, it was caught in a whirlpool. 
The line snapped, and the canoe, with all the provisions and 
blankets, was lost. 

The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a 
time of year when it was impossible to procure any wild 
fruit or roots. The continual rising of the water completely 
inundated the beach, which compelled them to force their 
way through a dense forest, rendered almost impervious by a 
thick growth of prickly underbrush. Their only nourishment 
was water. On the third day a man named IVIacon died, and 
his surviving comrades, though unconscious of how soon they 
might be called on to follow him, divided his remains into equal 
parts, on which they subsisted for several days. From the 



178 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

sore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did 
not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was 
the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his 
emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only 
two remained alive — Dubois and La Pierre. La Pierre was 
subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two Indians 
who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle 
Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House. 

He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the 
party, Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, 
living on the remains. When they felt strong enough to 
continue, they loaded themselves with as much of the flesh 
as they could carry ; that with this they succeeded in reach- 
ing the Upper Lake, around the shores of which they wan- 
dered for some time in search of Indians ; that their food at 
length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the 
prospects of starvation. On the second night after their last 
meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the conduct 
of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard ; and that 
shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while 
he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his 
clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on 
the hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent 
and desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe strug- 
gling. La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his 
antagonist, and, having no other resource left, was finally 
obliged to cut Dubois' throat. It was several days after 
this that he was discovered by the Indians. 

This was one of the earhest, and certainly the most 
terrible, of all the tragedies originating at the Dalles 
des Morts. There are a number of graves in the 
vicinity, but more numerous still are the inscriptions 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 179 

on the cliffs in memory of the victims whose bodies 
were never recovered for burial. 

Compared to what we had been having, lining down 
Death Rapids was comparatively simple. It was only 
when one got right down beside them that the terrible 
power of the great rolling waves became evident. 
From crest to trough they must have been from twelve 
to fifteen feet high, with the water — on account of the 
steep declivity and the lack of resistance from rocks — 
running at race-horse speed. We had become so used 
to expecting big boulders to underlie heavy waves that 
it was difficult to realize that there was all of a hun- 
dred feet of green water between these giant rollers 
and the great reefs of bedrock which were responsi- 
ble for them. 

For a quarter of a mile below where the rolling 
waves ceased to comb there was a green-white chaos 
of whirlpools and the great geyser-like up-boils where 
the sucked-down water was ejected again to the sur- 
face. This was another of the places where the river 
was said to "eat up" whole pine trees at high water, 
and it was not hard to believe. Even now the vora- 
cious vortices were wolfing very considerable pieces 
of driftwood, and one had to keep a very sharp 
lookout to see the spewed-forth fragments reappear 
at all. This was no water for a small boat or canoe. 
It would, for instance, have engulfed the sixteen- 
foot skiff which I used on the lower river as an 
elephant gulps a tossed peanut. But our big double- 
ended thirty-footer was more of a mouthful. Black- 
more pushed off without hesitation as soon as we had 



180 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

lined below the rollers, but not without reiterating the 
old warning about not dipping too deep, and being 
quick about throwing the oar free from its oar-lock 
if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We 
had a lively five minutes of it, what with the whirl- 
pools trying to suck her stern under and the geysers 
trying to toss her bow on high ; but they never had us 
in serious trouble. They did spin her all the way 
round, though, in spite of all the three of us could do 
to hold her, and as for our course — a chart of it would 
make the track of an earthquake on a seismograph 
look as if drawn with a straight-edge! 

Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, 
so named because two French-Canadian priests had 
been drowned there. This was to be our great rapid- 
running picture. Bad light had prevented our get- 
ting anything of the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket 
rapids, and "Twelve-Mile," though white and fast, 
was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was 
reputed the fastest on the whole river — certainly over 
twenty miles an hour, Blackmore reckoned. It had 
almost as much of a pitch as the upper part of the 
first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt 
fall. But, being straight as a city street and with 
plenty of water over the rocks, running it was simply 
a matter of having a large enough boat and being 
willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, 
and, for the sake of a real rip-snorting picture, he 
said he was willing to take the soaking. So were 
Andy and I. 

We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling 
"intake," and while Andy went down to help him set 





LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT {obove) 
'•WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT" ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (below) 





■>-* i.lf .-t^K 




LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (above) 

WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING 
BREECHES (beloiv) 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 181 

up in a favourable position, Blackmore and I lined 
back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good 
jump on when we started. Andy joined us presently, 
to report that Roos appraised the "back-lighting" 
effect across the white caps as "cheap at a million 
dollars." He was going to make the shot of his life. 
Pushing off we laid on our oars, floating down until 
we caught Roos' signal to come on. Then Andy and 
I swung into it with all of the something like four 
hundred and fifty pounds of beef we scaled between 
us. Blackmore headed her straight down the "V" 
into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It 
was a bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but 
a quiet passage was not what he was looking for this 
trip. 

The boat must have had half her length out of 
water when she hurdled off the top of that first wave. 
I couldn't see, of course, but I judged it must have 
been that way from the manner in which she slapped 
down and buried her nose under the next comber. 
That brought over the water in a solid green flood. 
Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but 
Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to 
withstand a full frontal attack. My one recollection 
of him during that mad run is that of a freshly 
emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying 
to blink the water out of his eyes. 

Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens 
the moment we hit the rough water, but neither Andy 
nor I stopped pulling on that account. Yelling like 
a couple of locoed Apaches, we kept slapping out with 
our oar-blades into every hump of water within reach. 



182 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

and I have an idea that we managed to keep a con- 
siderable way even over the speeding current right 
to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I 
ever made. A number of times during the war I was 
in a destroyer when something turned up to send it 
driving with all the speed it had — or all its plates 
would stand, rather — into a head sea. That meant 
that it made most of the run tunnelling under water. 
And that was the way it seemed going down Priest 
Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only 
about a quarter full of water when jve finally pulled 
up to the bank in an eddy to wait for the movie 
man. 

I could see that something had upset Roos by the 
droop of his shoulders, even when he was a long way 
off ; the droop of his mouth confirmed the first impres- 
sion on closer view. "You couldn't do that again, 
could you?" he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look 
in his eyes. The "Skipper" stopped bailing with a 
snort. "Sure I'll do it again," he growled sarcas- 
tically. "Just line the boat back where she was and 
I'll bring her down again — only not to-night. I'll 
want to get dried out first. But what's the matter 
anyhow? Didn't we run fast enough to suit you?" 

"Guess you ran fast enough," was the reply; "but 
the film didn't. Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Wash- 
out! Out of luck!" Engulfed in a deep purple aura 
of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked 
how far it was to camp and dinner. 

For a couple of miles we had a fast current with 
us, but by the time we reached the mouth of Downie 
Creek — the centre of a great gold rush half a century 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 183 

ago — the river was broadening and deepening and 
slowing down. A half hour more of sharp pulling 
brought us to Keystone Creek and Boyd's Ranch, 
where we tied up for the night. This place had the 
distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, 
but it was really little more than a clearing with a 
house and barn. Boyd had given his name to a rapid 
at the head of Revelstoke Canyon — drowned while 
trying to line by at high water, Blackmore said — and 
the present owner was an American Civil War Pen- 
sioner named Wilcox. He was wintering in Cali- 
fornia for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, 
knew where to look for the key. Hardly had the 
frying bacon started its sizzling prelude than there 
came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened 
an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the 
kitchen. Straight for Andy's shoulder he leaped, and 
the trapper's happy howl of recognition must have 
met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the 
ecstatically purring bundle to his breast as if it were 
a long-lost child, telling us between nuzzles into the 
arched furry back that this was "Tommy" (that was 
his name, of course), with whom he had spent two 
winters alone in his trapper's cabin. It was hard to 
tell which was the more delighted over this unex- 
pected reunion, man or cat. 

He had little difficulty in accounting for "Tom- 
my's" presence at Boyd's. He had given the cat to 
Wilcox a season or two back, and Wilcox, when he 
left for California, had given him to "Wild Bill," 
who had a cabin ten miles farther down the river. 
"Bill" already had a brother of "Tommy," but a cat 



184 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of much less character. As "Bill" was much given 
to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that "Tommy," 
who was a great sizer-up of personality, had left him 
in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to 
shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as 
readily as an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an 
easy matter as long as the snow did not get too deep. 
Of what might happen after that Andy did not like to 
think. He would have to make some provision for his 
pet before full winter set in. 

That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling 
all the cat stories we knew and quarrelling over whose 
turn it was to hold "Tommy" and put him through 
his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. 
There was all the usual "sit-up," "jump -through" 
and "roll-over" stuff, but with such "variations" as 
only a trapper, snow-bound for days with nothing 
else to do, would have the time to conceive and per- 
fect. For instance, if you only waved your hand in 
an airy spiral, "Tommy" would respond with no more 
than the conventional "once-over;" but a gentle tweak 
of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the 
left, while two tweaks directed him to the right. 
Similarly with his "front" and "back" somersaults, 
which took their inspiration from a slightly modified 
form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get 
the fine work out of him, but the ordinary "jump- 
through" stuff he would do for any of us. 

I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, tem- 
porarily at least, a good deal of mutual distrust. Roos 
didn't figure greatly, but Andy and Blackmore and 
I were glowering back and forth at each other with 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 185 

"I-suppose-you-don't-believe-/^/?af'"' expressions all 
evening. The two woodsmen, "hunting in couples" 
for the occasion, displayed considerable team-work. 
One of their best was of a trapper of their acquain- 
tance — name and present address mentioned with 
scrupulous particularity — who had broken his leg one 
winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end 
of his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he 
lay down to die of starvation. The next morning his 
cat jumped in through the window with a rabbit in his 
mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leav- 
ing the cat just enough to keep him alive, he took 
the rest for himself. That made the cat go on hunt- 
ing, and each morning he came back with a rabbit. 
And so it went on until springtime brought in his 
partner and relief. I asked them why, if the cat was 
so hungry, he didn't eat the rabbit up in the woods; 
but they said that wasn't the way of a cat, or at least 
of this particular cat. 

Then I told them of a night, not long before the 
war, that I spent with the German archaeologists ex- 
cavating at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on my 
door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Enter- 
ing the room, she nosed about under my mosquito net- 
ting for a few moments with ingratiating mewings 
and purrings, finally to trot out through the open 
door with an "I'11-see-you-again-in-a-moment" air. 
Presently she returned with a new-born kitten in her 
mouth. Nuzzling under the net and coverlets, she 
deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trot- 
ted off after another. When the whole litter of five 
was there, she crawled in herself and started nursing 



186 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

them. I spent the night on the couch, and without 
a net. 

According to the best of my judgment, that story 
of mine was the only true one told that night. And 
yet — confound them — they wouldn't believe it — any 
more than I would theirs ! 

Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time 
as to who was going to have "Tommy" to sleep with. 
Roos — who hadn't cut much ice in the story-telling — 
came strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man 
tactics and simply picking " Tommy '^ up and walking 
ojff with him. Waiting until Roos was asleep, I crept 
over and, gently extricating the furry pillow from 
under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle 
against my own ear. Whether Andy adopted the 
same Sabine methods himself, I never quite made 
sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that 
"Tommy" came crawling in the morning. 

As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in con- 
siderable doubt as to whether it would be best to 
leave his pet where he was or to take him down to 
"Wild Bill" again. "Tommy" cut the Gordian Knot 
himself by following us down to the boat like a dog 
and leaping aboard. He was horribly upset for a 
while when he saw the bank slide away from him and 
felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, muffling the dis- 
mal yowls under his coat, kept him fairly quiet until 
"Wild Bill's" landing was reached. Here he became 
his old self again, following us with his quick little 
canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met 
his twin brother, and the two, after a swift sniff of 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 187 

identification, slipped away across the clearing to 
stalk rabbits. 

"Wild Bill," as Andy had anticipated, was still in 
bed, but got up and welcomed us warmly as soon as 
he found who it was. He was a small man — much 
to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Ca- 
nadian gentleman in reduced circumstances than the 
most tumultuous booze-fighter on the upper Colum- 
bia. I had heard scores of stories of his escapades in 
the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide- 
open frontier towns and life was really worth living. 
But most of them just miss being "drawing-room," 
however, and I refrain from setting them down. 
There was one comparatively polite one, though, of 
the time he started the biggest free-for-all fight Rev- 
elstoke ever knew by using the white, woolly, cheek- 
cuddling poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the mud 
off his boots with. And another — but no, that one 
wouldn't quite pass censor. 

"Bill" had shot a number of bear in the spring, 
and now asked Andy to take the unusually fine skins 
to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He also asked 
if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he 
was running very short. He was jubilant when I 
told him he could take everything we had left for 
what it had cost in Golden. That was like finding 
money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close 
to ten cents a pound. But it wasn't the few dollars 
he saved on the grub that etched a silver — nay, a ro- 
seate — lining on the sodden rain clouds for "Wild 
Bill" that day; rather it was the sequel to the conse- 



188 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

quences of a kindly thought I had when he came down 
to the boat to see us off. 

" 'Bill,' " I said, as he started to wring our hands 
in parting, "they tell me you've become a comparative 
teetotaler these last few years. But we have a little 
'thirty per over-proof left — just a swallow. Per- 
haps — for the sake of the old days ..." 

That quick, chesty cough, rumbling right from the 
diaphragm, was the one deepest sound of emotion I 
ever heard — and I've heard a fair amount of "emot- 
ing," too. "Don't mind — if I de," he mumbled 
brokenly, with a long intake of breath that was al- 
most a sob. I handed him a mug — a hulking big 
half -pint coffee mug, it was — and uncorked the bot- 
tle. "Say when ..." 

"Thanks — won't trouble you," he muttered, 
snatching the bottle from me with a hand whose fin- 
gers crooked like claws. Then he inhaled another 
deep breath, took out his handkerchief, brushed off a 
place on one of the thwarts, sat down, and, pouring 
very deliberately, emptied the contents of the bottle 
to the last drop into the big mug. The bottle — a 
British Imperial quart — had been a little less than a 
quarter full; the mug was just short of brimming. 
"Earzow!" he mumbled, with a sweepingly compre- 
hensive gesture with the mug. Then, crooking his 
elbow, he dumped the whole half pint down his throat. 
Diluted four-to-one, that liquid fire would have made 
an ordinary man wince; and "Wild Bill" downed it 
without a blink. Then he wiped his lips with his 
sleeve, set mug and bottle carefully down on the 
thwart, bowed low to each of us, and stepped ashore 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 189 

with dignified tread. Blackmore, checking Roos' 
hysterical giggle with a prod of his paddle handle, 
pushed off into the current. "Wait!" he admonished, 
eyeing the still figure on the bank with the fascinated 
glance of a man watching a short length of fuse sput- 
ter down toward the end of a stick of dynamite. 

We had not long to wait. The detonation of the 
dynamite was almost instantaneous. The mounting 
fumes of that "thirty per" fired the slumbering vol- 
cano of the old trapper as a dash of kerosene fires a 
bed of dormant coals. And so "Wild Bill" went wild. 
Dancing and whooping like an Indian, he shouted 
for us to come back — that he would give us his furs, 
his cabin, the Columbia, the Selkirks, Canada. . . . 
What he was going to offer next we never learned, 
for just then a very sobering thing occurred — 
"Tommy" and his twin brother, attracted by the 
noise, came trotting down the path from the cabin to 
learn what it was all about. 

Andy swore that he had told "Bill" that we had 
brought "Tommy" back, and that "Bill" had heard 
him, and replied that he hoped the cat would stay this 
time. But even if this was true, it no longer signified. 
"Bill" had forgotten all about it, and hnew that there 
ought to be only one tiger-striped tomcat about the 
place, whereas his eyes told him there were two. So 
he kept counting them, and stopping every now and 
then to hold up two fingers at us in pathetic puzzle- 
ment. Finally he began to chase them — or rather 
"it" — now one of "it" and now the other. The last 
we saw of him, as the current swept the boat round 
a point, he had caught "Tommy's" twin brother and 



190 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was still trying to enumerate "Tommy." Very likely 
by that time there were two of him in fancy as well 
as in fact — possibly mauve and pink ones. 

Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum 
bottle and then tossed it gloomily into the river. 
"The next time you ask a man to take a 'swallow,' " he 
said, "probably you'll know enough to find out how 
big his 'swallow' is in advance." 

We pulled hard against a head wind all morning, 
and with not much help from the current. The latter 
began to speed up at Rocky Point Rapids, and from 
there the going was lively right on through Revel- 
stoke Canyon. Sand Slide Rapid, a fast-rolling ser- 
pentine cascade near the head of the Canyon, gave us 
a good wetting as Blackmore slashed down the middle 
of it, and he was still bailing when we ran in between 
the sides of the great red-and-black -walled gorge. 
Between cliffs not over a hundred feet apart for a 
considerable distance, the river rushes with great ve- 
locity, throwing itself in a roaring wave now against 
one side, now against the other. As the depth is very 
great (Blackmore said he had failed to get bottom 
with a hundred-and-fifty-foot line) , the only things to 
watch out for were the cliffs and the whirlpools. 
Neither was a serious menace to a boat of our size 
at that stage of water, but the swirls would have made 
the run very dangerous for a skiff or canoe at any 
time. Unfortunately, the drizzling rain and lowering 
clouds made pictures of what is one of the very finest 
scenic stretches of the Big Bend quite out of the ques- 
tion. If it had been the matter of a day or two, we 
would gladly have gone into camp and waited for the 



ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE 191 

light; but Blackmore was inclined to think the spell 
of bad weather that had now set in was the beginning 
of an early winter, in which event we might stand-by 
for weeks without seeing the sky. It was just as 
well we did not wait. As I have already mentioned, 
we did not feel the touch of sunlight again until we 
were on the American side of the border. 

From the foot of the Canyon to Blackmore's boat- 
house was four miles. Pulling down a broadening and 
slackening river flanked by ever receding mountains, 
we passed under the big C. P. R. bridge and tied up at 
four o'clock. In spite of taking it easy all the time, 
the last twenty miles had been run in quite a bit under 
two hours. 



CHAPTER IX 

BEVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 

The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the 
atrocious weather, had gone so well that I had just 
about made up my mind to continue on down river 
by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which 
awaited me at the hotel there from Captain Arm- 
strong, stating that he would be free to join me for 
my first week or ten days south from the foot of the 
lakes, was all that was needed to bring me to a de- 
cision. I wired him that I would pick him up in Nel- 
son as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of correspon- 
dence which had pursued me in spite of all directions 
to the contrary, and in the meantime for him to en- 
deavour to find a suitable boat. Nelson, as the me- 
tropolis of western British Columbia, appeared to be 
the only place where we would have a chance of find- 
ing what was needed in the boat line on short notice. 
While I wrote letters. Boos got his exposed film off 
to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received 
additional instructions from Chester in connection 
with the new picture — the one for which the opening 
shots had already been made at Windermere, and 
which we called "The Farmer Who Would See the 
Sea." 

As there was no swift water whatever between Rev- 
elstoke and Kootenay Rapids, I had no hesitation in 

192 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 193 

deciding to make the voyage down the Arrow Lakes 
by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and 
weather, it was now a good month to six weeks later 
than the most favourable time for a through down- 
river voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might 
be the means of avoiding so many days of winter fur- 
ther along. I was hoping that, with decreasing alti- 
tude and a less humid region ahead, I would at least 
be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all 
the way to Portland. I may mention here that, all 
in all, I played in very good luck on the score of 
weather. There were to be, however, a few geesly 
cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and 
two or three mighty blustery blows in the Cascades. 
The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the 
Columbia, keeping throughout their lengths the same 
general north-to-south direction of this part of the 
river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length, 
and has an average width of about three miles. Six- 
teen miles of comparatively swift river runs from the 
upper to the lower lake. The latter, which is forty- 
two miles long and two and a half wide, is somewhat 
less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and 
there are considerable patches of cultivation here and 
there along its banks — mostly apple orchards. There 
is a steamer channel all the way up the Columbia to 
Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by 
the Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts 
at the head of the upper lake and finishes at West 
Robson, some miles down the Columbia from the foot 
of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake 
trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending 



194 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

source of delight, even after a fortnight of the su- 
perlative scenery of the Big Bend. 

There is a stock stoiy they tell of the Arrow Lakes, 
and which appears intended to convey to the simple 
tourist a graphic idea of the precipitousness of their 
rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it while 
we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a 
man struggling in the water near the bank one day, 
he ran some distance off his course to throw the chap 
a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on 
swimming toward the shore. "Don't worry about 
me," he shouted back; "this is only the third time 
I've fallen off my ranch to-day." 

I told the Captain that the story sounded all right 
to me except in one particular — that even my glass 
failed to reveal any ranches for a man to fall off of. 
"Oh, that's all right," was the unperturbed reply; 
"there was one when that yarn was started, but I 
guess it fell into the lake too. But mebbe I had ought 
to keep it for the lower lake, though," he added; 
"there is still some un-slid ranches down there." 

Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky 
mountainside right at the point where Kootenay Lake 
spills over and discharges its surplus water into a 
wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone 
at the last for its long delay in making up its mind 
to join the Columbia. Nelson was made by the rich 
silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district, but it was 
so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy 
of the mining excitement over, it is still able to carry 
on strongly as a commercial distributing and fruit 
shipping centre. It is peopled by the same fine, out- 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 195 

door loving folk that one finds through all of western 
Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports. 
I am only sorry that I was not able to see more of 
both Nelson and its people. 

As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a 
clean breast to him about my failure to unearth the 
treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and bore 
up better than one would expect a man to under the 

circumstances. "I wish that matter of K and 

his D. T.'s had come up before you left," was his only 
comment. 

"Why?" I asked. "I can't see what difference that 
would have made. We didn't waste a lot of time 
digging." 

"That's just it," said the Captain with a wry grin. 
"Wouldn't you have gone right on digging if you 
had known that the spell of jim-jams that finished 
K came from some stuff he got from a section- 
hand at Beavermouth? Now I suppose I'll have to 
watch my chance and run down and salvage that keg 
of old Scotch myself." It shows the stuff that Arm- 
strong was made of when I say that, even after the 
way I had betrayed the trust he had reposed in me, 
he was still game to go on with the Columbia trip. 
That's the sort of man he was. 

Boats of anywhere near the design we would need 
for the river were scarce, the Captain reported, but 
there was one which he thought might do. This 
proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had 
been constructed especially to carry an out-board 
motor. She had ample beam, a fair freeboard and a 
considerable sheer. The principal thing against her 



196 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was the square stern, and that was of less moment 
running down river than if we had been working up. 
It did seem just a bit like asking for trouble, tack- 
ling the Columbia in a boat built entirely for lake use ; 
but Captain Armstrong's approval of her was quite 
good enough for me. Save for her amiable weakness 
of yielding somewhat overreadily to the seductive em- 
braces of whirlpools — a trait common to all square- 
sterned craft of inconsiderable length — she proved 
more than equal to the task set for her. We paid 
fifty-five dollars for her — about half what she had 
cost — and there was a charge of ten dollars for ex- 
pressing her to West Robson, on the Columbia. 

We left Nelson by train for Castlegar, on the Co- 
lumbia just below West Robson, the afternoon of 
October nineteenth. The track runs in sight of the 
Kootenay practically all of the way. There is a drop 
of three hundred and fifty feet in the twenty-eight 
miles of river between the outlet of the lake and the 
Columbia, with no considerable stretch that it would 
be safe to run with a boat. A large part of the drop 
occurs in two fine cataracts called Bonnington Falls, 
where there is an important hydro-electric plant, serv- 
ing Nelson and Trail with power; but most of the 
rest of the way the river is one continuous series of 
foam-white cascades with short quiet stretches be- 
tween. The last two or three miles to the river the 
railway runs through the remarkable colony of Rus- 
sian Doukobours, with a station at Brilliant, where 
their big co-operative jam factory and administrative 
offices are located. We had a more intimate glimpse 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 197 

of this interesting colony from the river the following 
day. 

We found the express car with the boat on the sid- 
ing at West Robson, and the three of us — Arm- 
strong, Roos and myself — had little difficulty in slid- 
ing her down the quay and launching her in the Co- 
lumbia. Pulling a mile down the quiet current, we 
tied her up for the night at the Castlegar Ferry, 
Then we cut across the bend through the woods for a 
look at Kootenay Rapids, the first stretch of fast 
water we were to encounter. After the rough-and- 
rowdy rapids of the Big Bend, this quarter-mile of 
white riffle looked like comparatively easy running. 
It was a very different sort of a craft we had now, 
however, and Armstrong took the occasion to give the 
channel a careful study. There were a lot of big black 
rocks cropping up all the way across, but he thought 
that, by keeping well in toward the right bank, we 
could make it without much trouble. 

On the way back to the hotel at Castlegar, the 
Captain was hailed from the doorway of a cabin set 
in the midst of a fresh bit of clearing. It turned out 
to be a boatman who had accompanied him and Mr. 
Forde, of the Canadian Department of Public 
Works, on a part of their voyage down the Columbia 
in 1915. They reminisced for half an hour in the 
gathering twilight, talking mostly of the occasion 
when a whirlpool had stood their Peterboro on end 
in the Little Dalles. I found this just a bit disturb- 
ing, for Armstrong had already confided to me that 
he intended running the Little Dalles. 



198 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

The boat trimmed well when we came to stow the 
load the next morning, but when the three of us took 
our places she was rather lower in the water than we 
had expected she was going to be. She seemed very 
small after Blackmore's big thirty-footer, and the 
water uncomfortably close at hand. She was buoy- 
ant enough out in the current, however, and responded 
very smartly to paddle and oars when Armstrong and 
I tried a few practice manoeuvres. The Captain sat 
on his bedding roll in the stern, plying his long pad- 
dle, and I pulled a pair of oars from the forward 
thwart. Roos sat on the after thwart, facing Arm- 
strong, with his tripod, camera and most of the lug- 
gage stowed between them. She Vv^as loaded to ride 
.high by the head, as it was white water rather than 
whirljDools that was in immediate prospect. With a 
small boat and a consequent comparatively small 
margin of safety, one has to make his trim a sort of a 
compromise. For rough, sloppy rapids it is well to 
have the bows just about as high in the air as you can 
get them. On the other hand, it is likely to be fatal 
to get into a bad whirlpool with her too much down 
by the stern. As the one succeeds the other as a gen- 
eral rule, about the best you can do is to strike a com- 
fortable mean based on what you know of the water 
ahead. 

I found it very awkward for a while pulling with 
two oars after having worked for so long with one, 
and this difficulty — especially in bad water — I never 
quite overcame. In a really rough rapid one oar is 
all a man can handle properly, and he does well if he 
manages that. Your stroke is largely determined by 





BONNINGTON FALLS OF THE KOOTENAY (above) 
PLASTERED LOG CABIN IN THE DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE (heloiv) 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 199 

the sort of stuff the blade is going into, and — as on 
the verge of an eddy — with the water to port running 
in one direction, and that to starboard running 
another, it is obviously impossible for a man handling 
two oars to do full justice to the situation. He sim- 
ply has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the 
man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter 
is an expert with the experience of Captain Arm- 
strong there is little likelihood of serious trouble. 

The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more 
difficult in a small boat. In a craft with only a few 
inches of freeboard it is obviously out of the question 
for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as 
he may do without risk in a hatteau or canoe large 
enough to give him a chance to brace his knees against 
the sides. Armstrong effected the best compromise 
possible by standing and getting a good "look-see" 
while he could, and then settling back into a securer 
position when the boat struck the rough water. The 
three or four feet less of vantage from which to con 
the channel imposes a good deal of a handicap, but 
there is no help for it. 

We ran both pitches of Kootenay Rapids easily 
and smartly. Her bows slapped down pretty hard 
when she tumbled off the tops of some of the bigger 
rollers, but into not the softest of the souse-holes 
would she put her high-held head. We took in plenty 
of spray, but nothing green — nothing that couldn't 
be bailed without stopping. It was a lot better per- 
formance than one was entitled to expect of a lake 
boat running her maiden rapid. 

"She'll do!" chuckled the Captain with a satisfied 



200 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

grin, resting on his paddle as we slid easily out of the 
final run of swirls; "you ought to take her right 
through without a lot of trouble." " Imshallahr I 
interjected piously, anxious not to offend the River 
God with a display of overmuch confidence. I began 
to call her "Imshallah" in my mind from that time on, 
and ''Imshallah" — "God willing" — she remained 
until I tied her up for her well-earned rest in a Port- 
land boat-house. It was in the course of the next day 
or two that I made a propitiatory offering to the 
River God in the form of the remnants of the jodpurs 
he had tried so hard to snatch from me at Rock Shde 
Rapids. I've always had a sneaking feeling offerings 
of that kind are "good medicine;" that the old Greeks 
knew what they were doing when they squared things 
with the Gods in advance on venturing forth into un- 
known waters. 

Big and Little Tin Cup Rapids, which are due to 
the obstruction caused by boulders washed down by 
the torrential Kootenay River, gave us little trouble. 
There is a channel of good depth right down the mid- 
dle of both, and we splashed through this without 
getting into much besides flying foam. Just below 
we pulled up to the left bank and landed for a look at 
one of the Doukobour villages. 

The Doukobours are a strange Russian religious 
sect, with beliefs and observances quite at variance 
with those of the Greek Church. Indeed, it was the 
persecutions of the Orthodox Russians that were re- 
sponsible for driving considerable numbers of them to 
Canada. They are best known in America, not for 
their indefatigable industry and many other good 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 201 

traits, but for their highly original form of protesting 
when they have fancied that certain of their rights 
were being restricted by Canadian law. On repeated 
occasions of this kind whole colonies of them — men, 
women and children — have thrown aside their every 
rag of clothing and started off marching about the 
country. Perhaps it is not strange that more has 
been written about these strange pilgrimages than of 
the fact that the Doukobours have cleared and 
brought to a high state of productivity many square 
miles of land that, but for their unflagging energy, 
would still be worthless. In spite of their somewhat 
unconventional habits, these simple people have been 
an incalculably valuable economic asset to western 
Canada. 

On the off chance that there might be an incipient 
"protest" brewing, Roos took his movie outfit ashore 
with him. He met with no luck. Indeed, we found 
the women of the astonishingly clean little village of 
plastered and whitewashed cabins extremely shy of 
even our hand cameras. The Captain thought that 
this was probably due to the fact that they had been 
a good deal pestered by kodak fiends while Godiva- 
ing round the country on some of their protest 
marches. "The people were very indignant about it," 
he said; "but I never heard of any one pulling 
down their blinds." Coventry was really very "Vic- 
torian" in its attitude toward Lady Godiva's "pro- 
test." 

There was good swift water all the way from Cas- 
tlegar to Trail, and we averaged close to nine miles an 
hour during the time we were on the river. At China 



202 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Bar the river was a good deal spread out, running in 
channels between low gravel islands. Any one of 
these was runnable for a small boat, and we did not 
need to keep to the main channel that had once been 
maintained for steamers. Sixteen miles below Cas- 
tlegar, and about half a mile below the mouth of Sul- 
livan Creek, there was a long black reef of basaltic 
rock stretching a third of the way across the river. 
We shot past it without difficulty by keeping near the 
left bank. The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter 
blotching the southern sky with saffron and coppery 
red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail. The 
stacks, with the town below and beyond, came into 
view just as we hit the head of a fast-running riffle. 
We ran the last half mile at a swift clip, pulling up 
into about the only place that looked like an eddy on 
the Trail side of the river. That this proved to be the 
slack water behind the crumbling city dump could not 
be helped. He who rides the running road cannot be 
too particular about his landing places. 

We reached Trail before noon, and, so far as time 
was concerned, could just as well have run right on 
across the American line to Northport that afternoon. 
However, October twenty-iirst turned out to be a 
date of considerable importance to British Colum- 
bians, for it was the day of the election to determine 
whether that province should continue dry or, as the 
proponents of wetness euphemized it, return to 
"moderation." As there was a special provision by 
which voters absent from their place of registration 
could cast their ballots wherever they chanced to be, 
Captain Armstrong was anxious to stop over and do 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 203 

his bit for "moderation." Indeed, I was a bit worried 
at first for fear, by way of compensating in a measure 
for the injury we had done him in faihng to come 
through with the treasure from the Big Bend, he 
would expect Roos and me to put in a few absentee 
ballots for "moderation." There was a rumour about 
that a vote for "moderation" would be later redeema- 
ble — in case "moderation" carried, of course — in the 
voter's weight of the old familiar juice. I never got 
further than a pencilled computation on the "temper- 
ance" bar of the Crown Point Hotel that two hundred 
and thirty-five pounds (I was down to that by now) 
would work out to something like one hundred seven- 
teen and a half quarts. This on the rule that "A 
pint's a pound, the world round." That was as far 
as I got, I say, for there seemed rather too much of a 
chance of international complications sooner or later. 
But I am still wondering just what is the law cover- 
ing the case of a man who sells his vote in a foreign 
country — and for his weight in whisky that he would 
probably never have delivered to him. I doubt very 
much if there is any precedent to go by. 

Between votes — or rather before Captain Arm- 
strong voted — we took the occasion to go over the 
smelter of the Consolidated INIining and Smelting 
Company. It is one of the most modern plants of its 
kind in the world, and treats ore from all over western 
Canada. We were greatly interested in the recently 
installed zinc-leaching plant for the handling of an 
especially refractory ore from the company's own 
mine in the Kootenays. This ore had resisted for 
years every attempt to extract its zinc at a profit, 



204 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

and the perfection of the intricate process through 
which it is now put at Trail has made a mine, which 
would otherwise have remained practically valueless, 
worth untold millions. The two thousand and more 
employes of the smelter are the main factor in the 
prosperity of this live and by no means unattractive 
little town. 

We had two very emphatic warnings before leaving 
Trail the next morning — one was on no account to 
attempt to take any drinkables across the line by the 
river, and the other was to keep a weather eye lifting 
in running the rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles 
below town. As we reached the latter before we did 
the International Boundary Line, we started 'ware- 
ing the rapids first. This was by no means as empty 
a warning as many I was to have later. The islands 
proved to be two enormous granite rocks, between 
which the river rushed with great velocity. The Cap- 
tain headed the boat into the deep, swift channel to 
the right, avoiding by a couple of yards a walloping 
whale of a whirlpool that came spinning right past 
the bow. I didn't see it, of course, until it passed 
astern; but it looked to me then as though its whirl- 
ing centre was depressed a good three feet below the 
surface of the river, and with a black, bottomless fun- 
nel opening out of that. I was just about to register 
"nonchalance" by getting off my "all-day-sucker" 
joke, when I suddenly felt the thwart beneath me 
begin to push upwards like the floor of a jerkily- 
started elevator, only with a rotary action. Fanning 
empty air with both oars, I was saved from falling 
backwards by the forty-five degree up-tilt of the boat. 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 205 

Way beneath me — down below the surface of the river 
— Armstrong, pop-eyed, was leaning sharply for- 
ward to keep from being dumped out over the stern. 
Roos, with a death-grip on either gunwale, was try- 
ing to keep from falling into the Captain's lap. Round 
we went like a prancing horse, and just as the boat 
had completed the hundred and eighty degrees that 
headed her momentarily up-river, something seemed 
to drop away beneath her bottom, and as she sunk 
into the hole there came a great snorting "ku-whouf !" 
and about a barrel of water came pouring its solid 
green flood over the stern and, incidentally, the Cap- 
tain. A couple of seconds later the boat had com- 
pleted her round and settled back on a comparatively 
even keel as hard-plied oars and paddle wrenched 
her out of the grip of the Thing that had held her in 
its clutch. I saw it plainly as it did its dervish dance 
of disappointment as we drew away. It looked to 
me not over half as large as that first one which the 
Captain had so cleverly avoided. 

"That was about the way we got caught in the 
Little Dalles," observed Armstrong when we were in 
quieter water again. "Only it was a worse whirlpool 
than that one that did it. This square stern gives the 
water more of a grip than it can get on a canoe. We'll 
have to watch out for it." 

Save over a broad, shallow bar across the current at 
the mouth of the Salmon, there was deep, swift water 
all the way to Waneta, the Canadian Customs sta- 
tion. Here we landed Roos to await the morning 
train from Nelson to Spokane and go through to 
Northport to arrange the American Customs formal- 



206 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ities. At a final conference we decided to heed the 
warning about not attempting to carry any drinkables 
openly into the United States. Stowing what little 
there was left where not the most lynx-eyed or ferret- 
nosed Customs Officer could ever get at it, we pushed 
off. 

There is a fairly fast current all the way to North- 
port, but from the fact that we made the eleven miles 
in about three-quarters of an hour, it seems likely 
that, between paddle and oars, the boat was driven 
somewhat faster than the Columbia. Just below 
Waneta and immediately above the International 
Boundary Line, the Pend d'Oreille or Clark's Fork 
flows, or rather falls into the Colum.bia. This really 
magnificent stream comes tumbling down a sheer- 
walled gorge in fall after fall, several of which can 
be seen in narrowing perspective from the Columbia 
itself. Its final leap is over a ten-feet-high ledge 
which extends all the way across its two-hundred-feet- 
wide mouth. Above this fine cataract it is the Pend 
d'Oreille, below it, the Columbia. I know of no place 
where two such rivers come together with such fine 
spectacular effect, in a way so fitting to the character 
of each. 

The Pend d'Oreille is generally rated as the prin- 
cipal tributary of the upper Columbia. Although the 
Kootenay — because it flows through a region of con- 
siderably greater annual rainfall — carries rather the 
more water of the two, the Pend d'Oreille is longer 
and drains a far more extensive watershed — that lying 
between the main chain of the Rockies and the Bitter 
Root and Coeur d'Alene ranges. Great as is the 



I 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 207 

combined discharge of these two fine rivers, their 
effect on the Columbia is not apparent to the eye. If 
anything, the latter looks a bigger stream where it 
flows out of the lower Arrow Lake, above the Koote- 
nay, than it does where it crosses the American Line 
below the Pend d'Oreille. As a matter of fact, its 
flow must be nearly doubled at the latter point, but 
the swifter current reduces its apparent volume. 
Nothing but the most careful computations, based 
on speed of current and area of cross-section, will give 
anything approximating the real discharge of a river. 

I was a good deal interested in the Pend d'Oreille, 
because it was on one of its upper tributaries, the 
Flathead in Montana, that I had made my first timid 
effort at rapid-running a good many years previously. 
It hadn't been a brilliant success — for two logs tied 
together with ropes hardly make the ideal of a raft; 
but the glamour of the hare-brained stunt had sur- 
vived the wetting. I should dearly have loved to ex- 
plore that wonderful black-walled canyon, with its 
unending succession of cataracts and cascades, but 
lack of time forbade. The drizzling rain made it im- 
possible even to get a good photograph of the fine 
frenzy of that final mad leap into the Columbia. 

It was funny the way that rain acted. For some- 
thing like a month now there had been only two or 
three days of reasonably fair weather, and for the last 
fortnight the sun had hardly been glimpsed at all. 
Pulling up to Waneta in a clammy drizzle. Captain 
Armstrong remarked, as he drew the collar of his 
water-proof closer to decrease the drainage down the 
back of his neck, that he reckoned they wouldn't stand 



208 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

for weather of that kind over in "God's Country." As 
there was nothing but sodden clouds to the southward, 
I didn't feel like giving him any definite assurance 
on the point at the moment. However, when we 
crossed the Line an hour later the rain had ceased. A 
couple of miles farther down the clouds were break- 
ing up, and at Northport the sun was shining. I did 
not have another rainy day, nor even one more than 
slightly overcast, until I was almost at the Cascades. 
I trust my good Canadian friend was as deeply im- 
pressed as he claimed to be. 

Beyond a sharp riffle between jagged rock islands 
above Deadman's Eddy, and one or two shallow boul- 
der bars where the channels were a bit obscure, it was 
good open-and-above-board water all the way to 
Northport. The "Eddy" is a whirling back-sweep 
of water at a bend of the river, and is supposed to hold 
up for inspection everything floatable that the Colum- 
bia brings down from Canada. "Funny they never 
thought of calling it 'Customs Eddy,' " Armstrong 
said. From the condition of its littered banks, it 
looked to be almost as prolific of "pickings" as the 
great drift pile of Kinbasket Lake. Being near a 
town, however, it is doubtless much more thoroughly 
gone over. 

We tied up below the Ferry at Northport, which 
was the rendezvous to which Roos was to bring the 
Customs Inspector. The ferry-man, who had once 
seen Captain Armstrong run the rapids of the upper 
Kootenay with one of his steamers, was greatly elated 
over having such a notable walking the quarterdeck 
of his own humble craft. Armstrong, in turn, was 



I 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 209 

scarcely less excited over an automatic pumping con- 
trivance which the ferry-man had rigged up to keep 
his pontoons dry. After waiting for an hour, we took 
our bags and walked up to the hotel on the main 
street at the top of the bluff. We found Roos in the 
office reading a last year's haberdashery catalogue. 
He said he had not expected us for a couple of hours 
yet, and that he had arranged for inspection at three 
o'clock. That gave us time for a bath and lunch our- 
selves. As our bags were now well beyond the tenta- 
cles of the Customs, we did a little figuring on the 
table-cloth between courses. By this we proved that, 
had we had the nerve to disregard the warnings of 
well-meaning friends in Trail and filled our hand- 
bags with Scotch instead of personal effects, Arm- 
strong would now have had fourteen quarts up in his 
room, and I eighteen quarts. Then the waitress gave 
us current local quotations, and we started to figure 
values. I shall never know whether or not there would 
have been room on the corner of that gravy and egg 
broidered napery for my stupendous total. Just as 
I was beginning to run over the edge, the Inspector 
came in and asked if we would mind letting him see 
those two suit-cases we had brought to the hotel with 
us ! Many and various are the joys of virtue, but none 
of the others comparable to that one which sets you 
aglow as you say "Search me!" when, by the special 
intervention of the providence which watches over 
fools and drunks, you haven't got goods. 

The inspection, both at the hotel and at the ferry, 
was fairly perfunctory, though I did notice that the 
Customs man assumed a rather springy step when he 



210 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

trod the light inner bottom of the skiff. Roos filmed 
the operation as a part of the picture, I acting as 
much as I could like I thought a farmer would act at 
his first Customs inspection. Roos, complaining that 
I didn't "do it natural," wanted to shoot over again. 
The Customs man was willing, but Armstrong and I, 
trudging purposefully off up the road, refused to 
return. Roos followed us to the hotel in considerable 
dudgeon. "Why wouldn't you let me make that shot 
over?" he asked. "It was an 'oil-can' — rotten!" "Be- 
cause," I replied evenly, looking him straight in the 
eye, "I was afraid the Inspector might try that jig-a- 
jig step of his on the false bottom in the bow if we put 
him through the show a second time. I don't believe 
in tempting providence. We can get a street-car 
conductor and make that Inspection shot again in 
Portland. This isn't . . ." "You're right," cut in 
Roos, with a dawning grin of comprehension. "I beg 
your pardon. You're a deeper bird than I gave you 
credit for. Or perhaps it was the Captain. . . ." 

A heavy fog filled the river gorge from bank to 
bank when we pushed off the following morning, and 
we had to nose down carefully to avoid the piers of 
the bridge of the Great Northern branch line to Ross- 
land. A quarter of a mile farther down the river 
began shoaling over gravel bars, and out of the mist 
ahead came the rumble of water tumbling over boul- 
ders. This was an inconsiderable riffle called Bishop's 
Rapid, but the Captain was too old a river man to 
care to go into it without light to choose his channel. 
A half hour's wait on a gravel bar in midstream 
brought a lifting of the fog, and we ran through by 




H 
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j/ a. 1% 



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THE "intake" at THE LITTLE DALLES iobove) 
WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (beloiv) 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 211 

the right hand of the two shallow channels without 
difficult}'. In brilliant sunshine we pulled down a 
broad stretch of deep and rapidly slackening water to 
the gleaming white lime-stone barrier at the head of 
the Little Dalles. 

All of Northport had been a unit in warning us not 
to attempt to run the Little Dalles. Nearly every 
one, as far as I could judge, had lost some relative 
there, and one man gave a very circumstantial de- 
scription of how he had seen a big hatteau, with six 
Swede Imnbermen, sucked out of sight there, never 
to reappear. On cross-questioning, he admitted that 
this was at high water, and that there was nothing 
like so much "suck" in the whirlpools at the present 
stage. The Captain, however, having just received 
telephonic word from Nelson that "moderation" had 
carried in B. C. by a decisive majority, felt that noth- 
ing short of running the Little Dalles would be ade- 
quate celebration. He had managed to come through 
right-side-up in a Peterboro once, and he thought our 
skiff ought to be equal to the stunt. He held that 
opinion just long enough for him to climb to the top 
of the cliff that forms the left wall of river at the 
gorge and take one good, long, comprehensive look 
into the depths. 

"Nothing doing," he said, with a decisive shake of 
his broad-brimmed Stetson. "The river's four or five 
feet higher than when we ran through here in 'fifteen, 
and that makes all the difference. It was touch-and- 
go for a minute then, and now it's out of the question 
for a small boat. If we can't line, we'll have to find 
some way to portage." 



212 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

The Little Dalles are formed by a great reef of 
limestone which, at one time, probably made a dam all 
the way across the river. The narrow channel which 
the Columbia has worn through the stone is less than 
two hundred feet in width for a considerable distance, 
and has lofty perpendicular walls. The river is di- 
vided by a small rock island into two channels at the 
head, the main one, to the right, being about two hun- 
dred feet in width, and the narrow left-hand one not 
over forty feet. The depth of the main channel is 
very great — probably much greater tlian its narrowest 
width; so that here, as also at Tumwater and "Five- 
Mile" in the Great Dalles, it may be truly said that 
the Columbia "has to turn on its side to wriggle 
through." 

It is that little rock island at the head of the gorge, 
extending, as it does, almost longitudinally across the 
current that makes all the trouble. It starts one set 
of whirlpools running down the right-hand channel 
and another set down the left-hand. Every one of 
the vortices in this dual series of spinning "suckers" 
is more than one would care to take any liberties 
with if it could be avoided; and either line of whirl- 
pools, taken alone, probably could be avoided. The 
impassable barrage comes a hundred feet below the 
point where the left-hand torrent precipitates itself 
at right-angles into the current of the right-hand one, 
and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a "V" and 
form one big walloping sockdolager. Him there 
would still be room to run by if he were "whouf-ing" 
there alone; but his satellites won't have it. Their 
accursed team-work is such that the spreading "V" 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 213 

above catches everything that comes down stream 
and feeds it into the maw of the big whirlpool as into 
a hopper. Logs, ties, shingle-bolts, fence-posts — all 
the refuse of sawmills and the flotsam and jetsam of 
farms and towns — are gulped with a "whouf!" and 
when they reappear again, a mile or two doAvn river, 
they are all scoured smooth and round-cornered by 
their passage through the monster's alimentary canal. 

"I'm sorry not to celebrate the victory of 'modera- 
tion,' " said the Captain finally, with another regret- 
ful shake of his head; "but 'moderation' begins at 
home. It would be immoderately foolish to put the 
skiff into that line of whirlpools, the way they're run- 
ning now." Roos was the only one who was inclined 
to dispute that decision, and as his part would have 
been to stand out on the brink of the cliff and turn the 
crank, it was only natural that he should take the 
"artistic" rather than the "humanitarian" view. 

As a last resort before portaging, we tried lining 
down, starting at the head of the narrow left-hand 
channel. We gave it up at the end of a hundred 
feet. A monkey at one end of the line and a log of 
wood at the other would have made the only combina- 
tion calculated to get by that way. It was no job 
for a shaky-kneed man and a sinkable boat. There 
was nothing to do but look up a team or truck. What 
appeared to be the remains of the ancient portage 
road ran down from an abandoned farm to the river, 
and it seemed likely some kind of vehicle could be 
brought over it. 

As the highway ran along the bench, four or five 
hundred feet above the river, I set off by the railroad 



214 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

track, which was comparatively close at hand. At the 
end of a couple of miles I reached a small station 
called Marble, the shipping point for a large apple 
orchard project financed by the J. G. White Com- 
pany of New York. Mr. Reed, the resident manager, 
immediately ordered a powerful team and wagon 
placed at my disposal, and with that I returned north- 
ward over the highway. We had a rough time get- 
ting down through brush and deadfalls to the river, 
but finally made it without an upset. Roos having 
finished what pictures he wanted — including one of 
the Captain standing on the brink of the cliff and reg- 
istering "surprise-cum-disappointment-cum-disgust," 
— we loaded the skiff and our outfit onto the wagon 
and stai'ted the long climb up to the top of the bench. 
The discovery of an overgrown but still passable road 
offered a better route than that followed in coming 
down, and we made the highway, and on to the vil- 
lage, in good time. Mr. Reed dangled the bait of a 
French chef and rooms in the company's hotel as an 
inducement to spend the night with him, but we had 
not the time to accept the kind invitation. His ready 
courtesy was of the kind which I learned later I 
could expect as a matter of course all along the river. 
Never did I have trouble in getting help when I 
needed it, and when it was charged for, it was almost 
invariably an under rather than an over-charge. The 
running road is the one place left where the people 
have not been spoiled as have those on the highways 
frequented by motor tourists. 

Launching the boat from the Marble Ferry at four 
o'clock, we pulled off in a good current in the hope 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 215 

of reaching Bossburg before dark. Between the 
windings of the river and several considerable 
stretches of slack water, however, our progress was 
less than anticipated. Shut in by high hills on both 
sides, night descended early upon the river, and at 
five-thirty I found myself pulling in Stygian black- 
ness. Knowing there was no really bad water ahead, 
the Captain let her slide through a couple of easy 
riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they 
flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening 
growl, borne on the wings of the slight up-river night- 
breeze, demanded more consideration. No one but a 
lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to 
say nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an 
eddy by the left bank, we stopped and listened. The 
roar, though distant, was unmistakable. Water was 
tumbling among rocks at a fairly good rate, certainly 
too fast to warrant going into it in the dark. 

While we were debating what to do, a black figure 
siUiouetted itself against the star-gleams at the top 
of the low bank. "Hello, there!" hailed the Captain. 
"Can you tell us how far it is to Bossburg?" ''This 
is Bossburg," was the surprising but gratifying re- 
sponse. "You're there — that is, you're here." It 
proved to be the local ferryman, and Columbia ferry- 
men are always obliging and always intelligent, at 
least in matters relating to the river. Tying up the 
boat, we left our stuff in his nearby house and sought 
the hotel with our hand-bags. It was not a promising 
looking hotel when we found it, for Bossburg was that 
saddest of living things, an all-but-extinguished 
boom-town ; but the very kindly old couple who lived 



216 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

there and catered to the occasional wayfarer bustled 
about and got us a corking good meal — fried chicken 
and biscuits as light as the whipped cream we had on 
the candied peaches — and our beds were clean and 
comfortable. 

As we were now but a few miles above Kettle Falls, 
the most complete obstruction in the whole length of 
the Columbia, I took the occasion to telephone ahead 
for a truck with which to make the very considerable 
portage. There would be two or three miles at the 
falls in any case, Captain Armstrong^said, and he was 
also inclined to think it would be advisable to extend 
the portage to the foot of Grand Rapids, and thus 
save a day's hard lining. It was arranged that the 
truck should meet us at the ruins of the old Hudson 
Bay post, on the east bank some distance above the 
upper fall. 

We pushed off from Bossburg at eight o'clock on 
the morning of October twenty-third. The water was 
slack for several hundred yards, which was found to 
be due to a reef extending all of the way across the 
river and forming the rapid which we had heard 
growling in the dark. This was called "Six Mile," and 
while it would have been an uncomfortable place to 
tangle up with in the night, it was simple running 
with the light of day. "Five Mile," a bit farther 
down, was studded with big black rocks, but none of 
them hard to avoid. As we were running rather 
ahead of the time of our rendezvous with the truck, 
we stretched our legs the length and back of the main 
street of Marcus, a growing little town which is the 
junction point for the Boundary Branch of the Great 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 217 

Northern. We passed the mouth of the Kettle River 
shortly after running under the railway bridge, and a 
pull across a big eddy carried us to the lake-like 
stretch of water backed up by the rocky obstructions 
responsible for Kettle Falls. The roar of the latter 
filled the air as we headed into a shallow, mud-bot- 
tomed lagoon widening riverward from the mouth 
of a small creek and beached the skiff under a yellow- 
ing fringe of willows. The site of the historic post 
was in an extremely aged apple orchard immediately 
above. It was one of those "inevitable" spots, where 
the voyageurs of all time passing up or down the river 
must have begun or ended their portages. I was try- 
ing to conjure up pictures of a few of these in my 
mind, when the chug-chugging of an engine some- 
where among the pines of the distant hillside recalled 
me to a realization of the fact that it was time to get 
ready for my own portage. Before we had our stuff 
out of the boat the truck had come to a throbbing 
standstill beyond the fringe of the willows. It prom- 
ised to be an easier portage than some of our predeces- 
sors had had, in any event. 

To maintain his "continuity," Roos filmed the skiff 
being taken out of the water and loaded upon the 
truck, the truck passing down the main street of the 
town of Kettle Falls, and a final launching in the 
river seven miles below. Half way into town we 
passed an old Indian mission that must have been 
about contemporaneous witli Hudson Bay operations. 
Although no nails had been used in its construction, 
the ancient building, with its high-pitched roof, still 
survived in a comparatively good state of preserva- 



218 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

tion. The town is some little distance below the Falls, 
and quite out of sight of the river, which flows here 
between very high banks. We stopped at the hotel 
for lunch before completing the portage. 

After talking the situation over with Captain Arm- 
strong, I decided to fall in with his suggestion to pass 
Grand Rapids as well as Kettle Falls in the portage. 
There were only about five miles of boatable water 
between the foot of the latter and the head of the 
former, and then an arduous three-quarters of a mile 
of lining that would have entailed the loss of another 
day. There is a drop of twelve feet in about twelve 
hundred yards in Grand Rapids, with nothing ap- 
proaching a clear channel among the huge black ba- 
saltic rocks that have been scattered about through 
them as from a big pepper shaker. As far as I could 
learn, there is no record of any kind of a man-pro- 
pelled craft of whatever size ever having run through 
and survived, but a small stern-wheeler, the Sho- 
shone, was run down several years ago at high water. 
She reached the foot a good deal of a hulk, but still 
right side up. This is rated as one of the maddest 
things ever done with a steamer on the Columbia, and 
the fact that it did not end in complete disaster is 
reckoned by old river men as having been due in about 
equal parts to the inflexible nerve of her skipper and 
the intervention of the special providence that makes 
a point of watching over mortals who do things like 
that. I met Captain McDermid a fortnight later in 
Potaris. He told me then, what I hadn't heard be- 
fore, that he took his wife and children with him. 
"Nellie thought a lot of both me and the little old 



/ 

REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 219 

Shoshone" he said with a wistful smile, "and she 
reckoned that, if we went, she wouldn't exactly like 
to be left here alone. And so — I never could refuse 
Nellie anything — I took her along. And now she 
and the Shoshone are both gone." He was a won- 
derful chap — McDermid. All old Columbia River 
skippers are. They wouldn't have survived if they 
hadn't been. 

There was a low bench on the left bank, about a 
mile below the foot of Grand Rapids, which could be 
reached by a rough road, and from which the boat 
could be slid down over the rocks to the river. Run- 
ning to this point with the truck, we left our heavier 
outfit at a road camp and dropped the boat at the 
water's edge, ready for launching the following 
morning. Returning to the town, we were driven 
up to the Falls by Dr. Baldwin, a prominent 
member of this live and attractive little commu- 
nity, where Roos made a number of shots. The upper 
or main fall has a vertical drop of fifteen feet at low 
water, while the lower fall is really a rough tumbling 
cascade with a drop of ten feet in a quarter of a mile. 
The river is divided at the head of the Falls by an 
arrow-shaped rock island, the main channel being the 
one to the right. The left-hand channel loops in a 
broad "V" around the island and, running between 
precipitous walls, accomplishes in a beautiful rapid the 
same drop that the main channel does by the upper 
fall. A rocky peninsula, extending squarely across 
the course of the left-hand channel, forces the rolling 
current of the latter practically to turn a somersault 
before accepting the dictum that it must double back 



220 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

northward for five or six hundred feet before uniting 
with the main river. It was the savage swirling of 
water in that rock- walled elbow where the "somer- 
sault" takes place that prompted the imaginative 
French-Canadian voyageurs to apply the appropri- 
ately descriptive name of Chaudiere to the boiling 
maelstrom. 

Up to the present the development of the enormous 
power running to waste over Kettle Falls has gone lit- 
tle further than the dreams of the brave community 
of optimists who have been attracted there in the 
belief that a material asset of such incalculable value 
cannot always be ignored in a growing country like 
our own. And they are right, of course, but a few 
years ahead of time. It is only the children and 
grandchildren of the living pioneers of the Columbia 
who will see more than the beginning of its untold 
millions of horse-power broken to harness. And in 
the meantime the optimists of Kettle Falls are turning 
their attention to agriculture and horticulture. Never 
have I seen finer apple orchards than those through 
which we drove on the way to resume our down-river 
voyage. 

The point from which we pushed off at ten o'clock 
on the morning of October twenty-fourth must have 
been only a little below that at which Lieutenant 
Symons launched the hatteau for his historic voyage 
to the mouth of the Snake in 1881. Forty years have 
gone by since that memorable undertaking, yet Sy- 
mons' report is to-day not only the most accurate 
description of an upper Columbia voyage that has 
ever been written, but also the most readable. During 



I 



I 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 221 

the time I was running the three hundred and fifty- 
miles of river surveyed by Lieutenant Symons, I 
found his admirable report only less fascinating on 
the human side than it was of material assistance on 
the practical. 

Of his preparations for the voyage Lieutenant 
Symons writes : 

"I was fortunate enough to procure from John Rickey, 
a settler and trader, who lives at the Grand Rapids, a 
strongly built hatteau, and had his assistance in selecting a 
crew of Indians for the journey. The hatteau was about 
thirty feet long, four feet wide at the gunwales, and two 
feet deep, and is as small a boat as the voyage should ever 
be attempted in, if it is contemplated to go through all the 
rapids. My first lookout had been to secure the services of 
'Old Pierre Agare' as steersman, and I had to carry on 
negotiations with him for several days before he finally con- 
sented to go. Old Pierre is the only one of the old Hudson 
Bay voyageurs now left who knows the river thoroughly at 
all stages of water, from Colville to its mouth. . . . The 
old man is sevent}'^ years of age, and hale and hearty, al- 
though his eyesight is somewhat defective. . . . The other 
Indians engaged were Pen-waw, Big Pierre, Little Pierre, and 
Joseph. They had never made the trip all the way down the 
river, and their minds were full of the dangers and terrors of 
the great rapids below, and it was a long time before we could 
prevail upon them to go, by promising them a high price 
and stipulating for their return by rail and stage. Old 
Pierre and John Rickey laboured and talked with them long 
and faithfully, to gain their consent, and I am sure that 
they started off with as many misgivings about getting safely 
through as we did who had to trust our lives to their skiU, 
confidence and obedience." 



222 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Lieutenant Symons does not state whether any con- 
fusion ever arose as a consequence of the fact that 
three of his five Indians bore the inevitable French- 
Canadian name of "Pierre." Of the method of work 
followed by himself and his topographical assistant, 
Downing, throughout the voyage, he writes : 

"Mr. Downing and myself worked independently in getting 
as thorough knowledge of the river as possible, he taking the 
courses with a prismatic compass, and estimating distances 
by the eye, and sketching in the topographical features of 
the surrounding country, while I estimarted also the dis- 
tances to marked points, and paid particular attention to the 
bed of the river, sounding wherever there were any indica- 
tions of shallowness. Each evening we compared notes as 
to distances, and we found them to come out very well to- 
gether, the greatest difference being six and three-fourths 
miles in a day's run of sixty-four miles. Some days they 
were identical. The total distance from our starting point 
... to the mouth of the Snake River was estimated by 
Mr. Downing to be three hundred and sixty-three miles, and 
by myself to be three hundred and fifty. His distances were 
obtained by estimating how far it was to some marked point 
ahead, and correcting it when the point was reached ; mine 
by the time required to pass over the distances, in which the 
elements considered were the swiftness of the current and 
the labour of the oarsmen." 

I may state that it was only rarely that we found 
the distances arrived at by Lieutenant Symons and 
Mr. Downing to be greatly at variance with those 
established by later surveys. In the matter of bars, 
rapids, currents, channels and similar things, there 
appeared to have been astonishingly little change in 



i 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 223 

the four decades that had elapsed since he had made 
his observations. Where he advised, for instance, 
taking the right-hand in preference to the middle or 
left-hand channels, it was not often that we went far 
wrong in heeding the direction. Bars of gravel, of 
course, shift from season to season, but reefs and 
projections of the native rock are rarely altered by 
more than a negligible erosion. The prominent to- 
pographical features — cliffs, headlands, coulees, 
mountains — are immutable, and for mile after mile, 
bend after bend, we picked them up just as Symons 
reported them. 

The river is broad and slow for a few miles below 
Grand Rapids (they are called Rickey's Rapids 
locally), with steep-sided benches rising on either 
hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in 
bright fringes along their brinks. There had been 
the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of a bad rapid to 
be encountered "somewhere below," but the data 
available on this part of the river made us practically 
certain that nothing worse than minor riffles existed 
until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was reached. 
Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of 
black basalt contracted the river considerably, but 
any one of two or three channels offered an easy way 
through them. The highest of them had a driftwood 
crown that was not less than fifty feet above the pres- 
ent stage of the river, showing graphically the great 
rise and fall at this point. 

At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians 
from the Colville Reservation fishing for salmon — 
the crooked-nosed "dogs" of the final run. If they 



224 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

were of the tribe from which the bar must have been 
named, civilization had brought them its blessing in 
the form of hair-restorer. They were as hirsute a lot 
of ruffians as one could expect to find out of Bol- 
shevia — and as dirty. 

Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we 
found during the day, but the menace was more ap- 
parent than real. The riffle took its name from a 
number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock 
pushing up all the way across the river. The current 
was swift and deep, making it just the sort of place 
one would have expected to encounter bad swirls. 
These were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at 
the foot of several of the narrow side runs, but by 
the broader middle channel which we followed the 
going was comparatively smooth. We finished an 
easy day by tying up at four o'clock where the road 
to the Colville Reservation comes down to the boul- 
der-bordered bank at Hunter's Ferry. 

Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and 
hospitable, and this one invited us to sleep on his 
hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was an 
amiable "cracker" from Kentucky, with a delectable 
drawl, a tired-looking wife and a houseful of chil- 
dren. Ferry -men's wives always have many children. 
This one was still pretty, though, and her droop — for 
a few years yet — would be rather appealing than 
otherwise. I couldn't be quite sure — from a remark 
she made — whether she had a sense of humor, or 
whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen 
stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two- 
year-old on her lap, and a three-year-old riding her 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 225 

foot, the while she was trying to fry eggs, bake bis- 
cuit afid boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bring- 
ing a brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it 
was a pity that the hmiian race hadn't been crossed 
with octopi, so that young mothers would have 
enough arms to do their work with. She nodded ap- 
provingly at first, brightening visibly at tlie eman- 
cipative vision conjured up in her tired brain, but 
after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into 
gloom. "I reckon it wouldn't be any use, mistah," 
she said finally; "them octupusses would only give the 
young 'uns mo' ahms to find troubl' with." Now 
did she have a sense of humour, or did she not ? 

We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay. 
The mow was built with a horseshoe-shaped manger 
running round three sides of it, into which the hay 
was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows de- 
voured what was below. As a labour-saving device it 
had a good deal to recommend it, but as a place to 
sleep — well, it might not have been so bad if each of 
the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight 
of our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing 
it into the manger all night, and so made a continu- 
ous performance of feeding and that bovine bell- 
chorus. I dozed off for a spell along toward morn- 
ing, awakening from a Chinese-gong nightmare to 
find my bed tilted down at an angle of forty-five de- 
grees and a rough tongue lapping my face. With 
most of my mattress eaten up, I was all but in the 
manger myself. Turning out at daybreak, we 
pushed off at an early hour. 

A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took 



226 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

us to Gerome, where another ferry crossed to the 
west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple of 
swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger's Bar 
was the only rough water encountered. We were 
looking for a point from which Spokane could be 
reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had orig- 
inally planned to go with us only to Kettle Falls, was 
now quite at the end of the time he was free to remain 
away from Nelson and business. There were two 
reasons for our making a temporary halt at Gerome 
Ferry. One was the fact that Spokane could be 
reached as readily from there as from any point lower 
down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have 
so much to say of Ike a bit further along that I shall 
no more than introduce him for the moment. 

As much of the worst water on the American course 
of the Columbia occurs in the two hundred and thirty 
miles between the head of Spokane Rapids and the 
foot of Priest Rapids,^ I was considerably concerned 
about finding a good river man to take Captain Arm- 
strong's place and help me with the boat. Roos made 
no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was reluctant 
to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead 
of us without a dependable man to handle the steer- 
ing paddle and to help with lining. Men of this kind 
were scarce, it appeared — even more so than on the 
Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain 
amount of logging and trapping going on. Two or 
three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I 



1 Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had run on 
the Big Bend in Canada. 

L. R. F. 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 227 

brought the matter up. There was nothing they 
would like better if they were free, they said, but, 
as ferries couldn't be expected to run by themselves, 
that was out of the question on such short notice. 

It was that genial "cracker" at Hunter's Ferry 
who was the first to mention Ike Emerson. Ike 
would be just my man, he said, with that unmistaka- 
ble grin that a man grins when the person he speaks 
of is some kind of a "character." Or, leastways, Ike 
would be just my man — if I could find him. "And 
where shall I be likely to find him?" I asked. He 
wasn't quite sure about that, but probably "daun 
rivah sumwhah." There was no telling about Ike, it 
appeared. Once he had been seen to sink when his 
raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been 
mourned as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that 
time he had turned up in Kettle Falls, but quite un- 
able — or else unwilling — to tell why the river had 
carried him eighty-five miles up stream instead of 
down to the Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had 
been Ike's fellow passenger on the ill-fated raft may 
have had something to do both with the wreck and 
that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any 
rate, it had never been explained. However, Gerome 
was Ike's headquarters — if any place might be called 
that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the 
time — and that would be the place to inquire for him. 

When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike 
Emerson had been seen thereabouts recently, he 
grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at Hun- 
ter's had grinned when the same subject was under 
discussion. Yes, he had seen Ike only the night be- 



228 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

fore. He was a real old river rat; just the man I 
wanted — if I could find him. He was as hard as a 
flea to put your hand on when you did want him, 
though. Well, it took us four hours to run our man 
down, but luck was with us in the end. Every lum- 
berjack, farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike, 
grinned that same grin, dropped whatever he was 
doing and joined in the search. There were a score of 
us when the "View Halloo" was finally sounded, and 
we looked more like a lynching party on vengeance 
bent than anything else I can think of. Ike, who was 
digging potatoes (of all the things in the world for a 
river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we 
debouched from a coulee and streamed down toward 
him, but his brow cleared instantly when I hastily 
told him what we had come for. 

You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a mo- 
ment! Why should we not go with him? He was 
overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had con- 
tracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just 
about to get to work building it. We could just 
throw our boat aboard, and off we would go together. 
If he could get enough help, he could have the raft 
ready in two or three days, and, once started, it would 
not be a lot slower than the skiff, especially if we took 
a fast motor-boat he knew of for towing purposes 
and to "put her into the rapids right." It would mxake 
a lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always 
dreamed of having himself filmed on a big raft run-' 
ning Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let us leave 
it to him, and he would turn out something that would 
be the real thing. 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 229 

All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I 
turned to Roos and Captain Armstrong for confirma- 
tion before venturing a decision. Roos said it would 
be "the cat's ears" (late slang meaning au fait, or 
something like that, in English) ; that a raft would 
photograph hke a million dollars. Armstrong's face 
was beaming. "It will be the chance of a lifetime," 
he said warmly. "Go by all means. I'm only sorry 
I can't be with you." So we gave Ike carte blanche 
and told him to go ahead ; we would arrange the finan- 
cial end when he knew more about what he would be 
spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it 
would give us a chance to speed the Captain on his 
way as far as Spokane. 

Running over a Spokane paper in the post office 
and general store at Gerome, the program of the 
Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow, Oc- 
tober the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a 
conditional engagement to perform at that function. 
Major Laird, the Publicity Secretary of the Cham- 
ber, had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if 
I would run up to Spokane from some convenient 
point on the river and give them a bit of a yarn about 
our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon. I had 
replied that, as it was quite out of the question keep- 
ing to any definite schedule in river travel, I could 
give him no positive assurance of turning up in time, 
but suggested that if he would sign up some one else 
for piece de resistance, he could be free to use me for 
soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As 
it now appeared that we had arrived within a few 
hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird, and he 



230 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

said he would start a car off at once to take us there. 

We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the 
continuity of his "farmer" picture. Although Cap- 
tain Armstrong had appeared in all the scenes shot 
since we started with the skiff, he had never made his 
official entry into the picture. Properly, this should 
have been done in one of the introductory scenes shot 
at the source of the river, near Lake Windermere. It 
will be remembered that, when I leaned on my hay- 
fork and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was 
supposed to see a prospector tinkering with his boat. 
I had walked out of two scenes on my way to 
join that prospector: the first time to ask if 
he would take me with him, and the second time, with 
a blanket-roll on my shoulder (the improvised one 
with the two "nicht-goons" and other foreign knick- 
knacks in it), to jump into the boat and push off. 
Obviously, as we had neither prospector nor boat at 
the time, these shots could not be made until later. 
Now, with the "prospector" about to leave us, it was 
imperative to continuity that we should get him into 
the picture before we could go ahead getting him out 
of it. 

"Location" was our first care, and in this fortune 
favoured us. The mouth of a small creek flowing in 
just below Gerome furnished a "source of the Colum- 
bia" background that would have defied an expert to 
tell from an original. In fact, it looked more like the 
popular idea of a "source" than did the real one; and 
that is an important point with the movies. Here we 
made the "tinkering" and the "first push-off" shots. 
Of course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoul- 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 231 

der this time, but I took great care to make it as close 
an imitation as possible of the one I had so hastily- 
flung together out of "Jock's" bedding. A close imi- 
tation externally, I mean — there were no "frou- 
frous" in it. 

Now that we had the "prospector" properly into 
the picture, we were ready for the "farewell" shot — 
the getting him out of it. For this the Captain and I 
were "picked up" on a picturesque rocky point, re- 
garding with interest something far off down-river. 
Presently he registers "dawning comprehension," and 
tells me in fluent French-Canadian pantomime that it 
is a raft — a whale of a big one. That will offer a way 
for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave 
me. Then we go down to the boat, which he presents 
to me with a comprehensive "it-is-all-yours" gesture, 
before shouldering^iis sack of ore (one of our bags of 
canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing 
off up the bank toward the "smelter." (We had in- 
tended to make a real smelter scene at Trail or North- 
port, but the light was poor at both places.) Finally 
I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the cur- 
rent to throw in my fortunes with the "raft." That 
left the thread of "continuity" dangling free, to be 
spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft completed. 
That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we 
heard the rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and 
every now and then a fan-shaped splash of spray 
would flash up with a spangle of iridescence in the light 
of the declining sun. 

The car arrived for us at seven-thirtj'- that evening. 
It was driven by Commissioner Howard, of the Spo- 



232 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

kane County Board, who had courteously volunteered 
to come for us when it appeared there would be some 
delay in getting a hired car off for the hundred and 
sixty -mile round trip. He was accompanied by his 
son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten 
lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready 
to start on the return trip at once. The road turned 
out to be a rough mountain track, and rather muddy. 
Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set 
in somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles 
the differential had gone. Mr. Haward finally in- 
duced an empty truck to take us in tow, and behind 
that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles. 
The tow-chain parted on an average of once a mile 
while we were still in the mountains, but did better 
as the roads improved. The temperature fell as the 
altitude increased, and it must have been well un- 
der twenty before daylight — and a mean, marrow- 
searching cold at that. Mr. Howard, refusing every 
offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way in 
— a remarkable example of nerve and endurance, 
considering that he had only recently come out of a 
hospital. Armstrong, as always, was indomitable, 
singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood- 
stirring tempo most of the way. I shall ever asso- 
ciate his 

^^Rouli, roulant, ma houle roulant. 
En roulant, ma houle roulant!" 

rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than 
with the creak of oars from which it derived its inspi- 
ration. 



REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE 233 

We struck the paved state highway at Davenport 
about four o'clock, and in the very grey dawn of 
the morning after came rumbhng into Spokane. 
Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped 
rumbling. The truck driver reported he had run out 
of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole's tank yielded 
just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Daven- 
port of Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all 
the world, but if it had been just a cabin with a stove, 
it would still have seemed a rose-sweet paradise after 
those last two nights we had put in — one on the hay 
with belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs, 
and the other jerked over a frosty road in the wake of 
a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour in a steaming 
bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders 
not to be called until noon. 

Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beau- 
tiful cities of the West, and I have never left it after 
a visit without regret. This time, brief as our stay 
had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually 
keen looking lot of business and professional men that 
turned out for the Chamber luncheon, among whom I 
found not a few old college friends and others I had 
not seen for a number of years. Notable of these 
were Herbert INIoore and Samuel Stern, with whom 
I had spent six weeks on a commercial mission in 
China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to meet 
Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project 
for reclaiming a million and three-quarters acres of 
land in the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington 
by diverting to it water from the Pend d'Oreille. 
The incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need 



234 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of this daring project I was to see much of at first- 
hand during that part of my voyage on which I was 
about to embark. 

Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the 
evening of the 27th, and the following morning Major 
Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For a 
considerable part of the distance we followed the 
highly picturesque route along the Spokane River, 
stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric plant of the 
Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This 
enterprising corporation has power installations 
already in operation on the Spokane which must make 
that stream pretty nearly the most completely har- 
nessed river of its size in America. The lofty concrete 
barrier which backs up Long Lake has the distinc- 
tion of being the highest spillway dam in the world. 
The "Spokane interval" proved a highly enjoyable 
spell of relaxation before tackling the rough stretch 
of river ahead. I knew I was going to miss greatly 
the guiding hand and mind of Captain Armstrong, 
but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be 
disappointed. 



CHAPTER X 

RAFTING THROUGH HELI. GATE 

Ike had been working at high speed during our 
absence, but his imagination appeared rather to have 
run ahead of his powers of execution. The hundred- 
feet-long, thirty-feet-wide raft he had set himself to 
construct (so as to have something that would "stack 
up big in the movie") took another two days to com- 
plete, and even then was not quite all that critical 
artist wanted to make it. After filling in the raft 
proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began 
heaping cordwood upon it. He was trying 
to make something that would loom up above 
the water, he explained; "somethin' tu make a 
showin' in the pictur'." He had three or four teams 
hauling, and as many men piling, for two days. We 
stopped him at fifty cords in order to get under way 
the second day after our return. There was some 
division of opinion among the 'long shore loafers as to 
whether or not this was the largest raft that had ever 
started down this part of the Columbia, but they 
were a unit in agreeing that it was the highest. Never 
was there a raft with so much "freeboard." The 
trouble was that every foot of that "freeboard" was 
cordwood, and then some; for the huge stacks of four- 
foot firewood had weighted down the logs under them 
until those great lengths of spruce and cedar were 
completely submerged. When you walked about "on 

235 



236 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

deck" you saw the river flowing right along through 
the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was ex- 
ultant over the way that mighty mass of rough wood 
charging down a rock-walled canyon was going to 
photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over the 
Thing he had brought into being. But Roos was 
going to be cranking on the cliff when we went 
through Hell Gate, and Ike didn't care a fig what 
happened to him anyhow. And I did care. There 
were a lot of things that could happen to a crazy con- 
traption of that kind, if ever it hit anything solid; and 
I knew that the walls of Hell Gate and Box Canyon 
must be solid or they wouldn't have stood as long as 
they had. And as for hitting . . . that raft must be 
pretty nearly as long as Hell Gate was wide, and if 
ever it got to swinging. . . . It's funny the things 
a man will think of the night before he is going to 
try out a fool stunt that he doesn't know much 
about. 

A fine motherly old girl called Mrs. Miller had 
put us up in her big, comfortable farmhouse during 
our wait while Ike completed his ship-building oper- 
ations. She must have known all of seven different 
ways of frying chicken, and maybe twice that number 
of putting up apple preserves. We had just about all 
of them for breakfast the morning we started. Jess, 
the ferry-man, treated us to vanilla extract cordials 
and told us the story of a raft that had struck and 
broken up just above his father's ranch near Hawk 
Creek. Only guy they fished out was always nutty 
afterward. Cracked on the head with a length of 
cordwood while swimming. Good swimmer, too; but 
a guy had no chance in a swish-swashing bunch of 



^THADASKA- 

F»A£>5' 



•f "'" 



rNCAMP»MENT 

, ZI-TTILE RAPIPS' 









E)R1TI5>H 
C OLUMBIA 













MAP OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 237 

broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus — or in similar 
vein — about a dozen others who came down to see us 
off from the ferry landing. They all told stories of 
raft disasters, just as they would have enlarged on 
boat disasters if it had been a boat in which we were 
starting to run Hell Gate and Box Canyon. 

I pulled across and landed Roos at the raft to make 
an introductory shot or two of Ike before picking up 
the thread of his "continuity" with my (pictorial) 
advent. A corner of the raft had been left unfinished 
for this purpose. Ike was discovered boring a log 
with a huge auger, after which he notched and laid a 
stringer, finishing the operation by pegging the latter 
down with a twisted hazel withe. The old river rat 
seemed to know instinctively just what was wanted 
of him, going through the action so snappily that Roos 
clapped him on the back and pronounced him "the 
cat's ears" as an actor. 

Ike showed real quality in the next scene; also the 
single-minded concentration that marks the true 
artist. Looking up from his boring, he sees a boat 
paddling toward him from up-river. The nearing 
craft was Imshallah, with the "farmer" at the oars, 
just as he had started (for the still unbuilt raft) 
when the "prospector" gave him the boat before dis- 
appearing up the bank to the "smelter" with his sack 
of "ore" over his shoulder. Thus "continuity" was 
served. 

The "farmer" pulls smartly alongside, tosses Ike 
the painter and clambers aboard the raft. An ani- 
mated colloquy ensues, in which the "farmer" asks 
about the river ahead, and Ike tells him, with dramatic 
gestures, that it will be death to tackle it in so frail 



238 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

a skiff. A raft is the only safe way to make the pas- 
sage and — here Ike spreads out his hands with the 
manner of a butler announcing that "dinner is 
served!" — the raft is at the "farmer's" disposal. That 
suits the "farmer" to a "T;" so the skiff is lifted 
aboard and they are ready to cast off. 

Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true ar- 
tist was in the skiff -lifting shot. Just as the green 
bow of Imshallah came over the side, a boy who had 
been stacking cordwood, in rushing forward to clear 
the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and 
went through into the river. By this time, of course, 
I knew better than to spoil a shot by suspending or 
changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike 
should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too 
much to expect. Yet the sequel proved how much 
more consummate an artist of the two of us that un- 
tutored (even by Roos) old river rat was. When we 
had finished "Yo-heave-ho-ing" as the skiff settled into 
place, I (dropping my histrionics like a wet bathing 
suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me fish that kid 
out. "What kid?" he drawled in a sort of languid 
surprise. Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of 
the raft, fore-and-aft: "By cripes, the kid is gone!" 
Now has that ever been beaten for artistic concentra- 
tion? 

The lad, after bumping down along the bottom to 
the lower end of the raft, had come to the surface no 
whit the worse for his ducking. He was clambering 
up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I, 
teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had 
stumbled half the distance to the "stern." "It must 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 239 

be a right sma't betta goin' daun unda than up heah," 
was Ike's only comment. 

The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the 
raft was already on hand. It had been built by a 
Spokane mining magnate for use at his summer home 
on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and was one of the prettiest 
little craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines 
streaming gracefully back from its sharp, beautifully- 
flared bow, it showed speed from every angle. Hard- 
wood and brass were in bad shape, but the engines 
were resplendent; and the engines were the finest 
thing about it. They had been built to drive it twenty- 
five miles an hour when she was new, the chap run- 
ning it said, and were probably good for all of twenty- 
two yet when he opened up. Except that its hull 
wasn't rugged enough to stand the banging, it was an 
ideal river boat, though not necessarily for towing 
rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that 
ignominious work. 

I couldn't quite make up my mind about the en- 
gineer of the motor boat — not until he settled down 
to work, that is. His eye was quite satisfactory, but 
his habit of hesitating before answering a question, 
and then usually saying "I dunno," conveyed rather 
the impression of torpid mentality if not actual dul- 
ness. Nothing could have been further from the truth, 
as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging 
the raft into the current. He merely said "I dunno" 
because he really didn't know, where an ordinary man 
would have felt impelled to make half an answer, or 
at least to say something about the weather or the 
stage of the river. Earl (I never learned his last 



240 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

name) was sparing with his tongue because he was 
unsparing with his brain. His mind was always ready 
to act — and to react. There were to arise several sit- 
uations well calculated to test the mettle of him, and 
he was always "there." I have never known so thor- 
oughly useful and dependable a man for working a 
launch in swift water. 

While Ike was completing his final "snugging 
down" operations, I chanced to observe a long steel- 
blue and slightly reddish-tinged body working up the 
bottom toward the stern of the raft^ It looked like 
a salmon, except that it was larger than any member 
of that family I had ever seen. A blunt-pointed pike- 
pole is about the last thing one would use for a fish- 
spear, but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried 
it. My first thrust was a bad miss, but, rather 
strangely, I thought — failed to deflect the loggily 
nosing monster more than a foot or two from his 
course. The next thrust went home, but where I was 
half expecting to have the pole torn from my hands 
by a wild rush, there was only a sluggish, unresentful 
sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to 
the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize 
along the bottom to the bank, where a couple of In- 
dians lifted it out for me. It was a salmon after all — 
a vicious looking "dog," with a wicked mouthful of 
curving teeth — but of extraordinary size. It must 
have weighed between fifty and sixty pounds, for the 
pike-pole all but snapped when I tried to lift the 
monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubt- 
edly responsible for the fact that it was already half- 
dead from battering on the rocks before I speared it. 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 241 

As the flesh was too soft even for the Indians, I gave 
it to a German farmer from a near-by clearing to feed 
to his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had 
a dog which, for the sake of "hmnan interest," Roos 
very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing it was a 
dog, he should not have called it "canine interest," I 
never quite understood; but it was the "heart touch" 
he wanted, at any rate). So Ike proposed to the 
"Dutchman" that we give him fifty pounds of dead 
"dog" for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be 
returned when we were through with him. That was 
Ike's proposition. As soon as we were under way, 
however, he confided to me that he never was going 
to give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A peo- 
ple that had done what the "Dutchmen" did to Bel- 
gium had no right to have a collie anyhow. If they 
must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds — or pigs. 
And he forth^vith began to alienate that particular 
collie's affection by feeding him milk chocolate. Poor 
old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he 
did not have a wife in every port, so that there was an 
empty place in his heart that craved affection. 

We cast off at ten o'clock, Earl swung the raft's 
head out by a steady pull with the launch, and the 
current completed the operation of turning. Once 
in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat 
maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing- 
line taut and give her a mile an hour or so of way over 
the current. That gave Earl a margin to work with, 
and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the other, 
he kept the great pile of logs headed where the cur- 
rent was swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all 



242 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

in using his power at the right time and in the right 
way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been help- 
less in stopping the raft once it started to go in the 
wrong direction. The trick was to start it right and 
not let it go wrong, Ike explained — just like raising 
pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a novice, 
and I found constant reassurance in the consummate 
"raftsmanship" our taciturn engineer was displaying. 

The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and 
more rugged as we ran to the south, and the trees 
became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch grass on 
the diminishing benches at the bends was withered and 
brown. It was evident from every sign that we were 
nearing the arid belt of eastern Washington, the great 
semi-desert plateau that is looped in the bend of the 
Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the 
mouth of the Snake. The towering split crest of 
Mitre Rock marked the approach to the slack stretch 
of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which 
tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the lat- 
ter was to be our real baptism ; a short rapid passed a 
few miles above proving only rough enough to set the 
raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few 
light gobs of spray over her "bows." We were now 
going up against something pretty closely approxi- 
mating the real thing. It wasn't Hell Gate or Box 
Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time 
it wasn't any place to risk any slip-up. 

Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big 
Bend of Canada, Spokane Rapids has a stretch of 
water that must go down hill just about as fast as any 
on all the Columbia. The channel — although running 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 243 

between boulders — was narrow in the first place, and 
the deepest part of it was still further restricted hy 
an attempt to clear a way through for steamer navi- 
gation in the years when a through service up and 
down the Columbia was still dreamed of. The chan- 
nel was deepened considerably, but the effect of this 
was to divert a still greater flow into it and form a 
sort of a chute down which the water rushed as 
through a flume. Being straight, this channel is not 
very risky to run, even with a small boat — provided 
one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the 
left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a 
raft. That was why we had the motor-boat — to be 
sure of "hitting the intake right," as Ike put it. And 
the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job 
without help. He had been working hard ever since 
we started on a gigantic stern-sweep, but that was for 
Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her nose 
once in right, she should do it on her own. 

Mooring the raft against the right bank in the 
quiet water a couple of hundred yards above the "in- 
take," Earl ran us down to the mouth of the Spokane 
River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline 
and provisions in the little village of Lincoln, just 
below the Spokane, and Ike thought that the lower 
end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos to 
set up to command the raft coming through. It was 
indeed terrifically fast water, but — because the launch 
had the power to pick the very best of the channel — 
the run down just missed the thrill that would have 
accompanied it had it been up to one's oars to keep 
his boat out of trouble. Earl shut off almost com- 



2U DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

pletely as he slipped into the "V," keeping a bare 
steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour 
was quite fast enough to be going in the event she did 
swerve from the channel and hit a rock ; there was no 
point in adding to the potential force of the impact 
with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the 
rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite 
the town. Earl stayed with the launch, keeping her 
off the rocks with a pole while Ike, Roos and myself 
went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in 
packing a leaking can down over the boulders, caus- 
ing burns from which he suffered considerable pain 
and annoyance when he came to man the sweep the 
following day. 

After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for 
the picture, Earl drove the launch back up the rapid 
to the raft. I hardly know which was the more im- 
pressive, the power of the wildly racing rapid or the 
power of the engine of the launch. It was a ding- 
dong fight all the way. Although he nosed at times 
to within a few inches of the overhanging rocks of the 
bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was 
brought repeatedly to a standstill. There she would 
hang quivering, until the accelerating engine would 
impart just the few added revolutions to the propel- 
lers that would give her the upper hand again. The 
final struggle at the "intake" was the bitterest of all, 
and Earl only won out there by sheering to the right 
across the "V" — at imminent risk of being swung 
round, it seemed to me — and reaching less impetuous 
water. 

Throwing off her mooring lines. Earl towed the 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 245 

raft out into the sluggish current. There was plenty 
of time and plenty of room to manoeuvre her into the 
proper position. All he had to do was to bring her 
into the "intake" well clear of the rocks and rollers to 
the left, and then keep towing hard enough to hold 
her head down-stream. It was a simple operation — 
compared, for instance, with what he would have on 
the morrow at Hell Gate — but still one that had to 
be carried out just so if an awful mess-up was to be 
avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a raft, I 
could readily see what would happen if she once got 
to swinging and turned broadside to the rapid. 

That was about the first major rapid I ever recall 
running when I didn't have something to do, and it 
was rather a relief to be able to watch the wheels go 
round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for. 
Even Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or 
rather hand-free. Knowing Earl's complete capa- 
bility, he prepared to cast aside navigational worries 
for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was about 
to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering- 
oar, when I reminded him that he was still an actor 
and that he had been ordered to run up and down the 
raft and register "great anxiety" while within range 
of the camera. 

Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run 
was the feeling of surprise that swept over me at the 
almost uncanny speed with which that huge unwieldy 
mass of half submerged wood gathered way. In still 
water it would have taken a powerful tug many min- 
utes to start it moving; here it picked up and leapt 
ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was drifting 



246 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, hav- 
ing slid over the "intake," it was doing more than 
twenty. The actual slope of that first short pitch 
must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found my- 
self bracing against the incline of the raft, as when 
standing in a wagon that starts over the brow of a 
hill. Then the pitch eased and she hit the rollers, 
grinding right through them like a floating Jugger- 
naut. The very worst of them — haughty-headed 
combers that would have sent the skiff sky-rocketing 
— simply dissolved against the logs and died in hissing 
anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had 
nothing of the jerkiness of even so large a craft as the 
launch, and one noticed it less under his feet than 
when he looked back and saw the wallowing undula- 
tions of the "deck." 

But best of all was the contemptuous might with 
which the raft stamped out, obliterated, abolished the 
accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not deep and 
steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid, 
like the Dalles or Hell Gate, but there were still a lot 
of mighty mean-mouthed "suckers" lying in ambush 
where the rollers began to flatten. There was no 
question of their arrogance and courage. The raft 
might have been the dainty Iinshallah, with her 
annoying feminine weakness for clinging embraces, 
for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it. 
But, oh, what a difference! Where the susceptible 
Imshallah had edged off in coy dalliance and ended 
by all but surrendering, the raft simply thundered 
ahead. The siren "whouf!" of the lurking brigand 
was forced back down its black throat as it was lit- 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 247 

erally effaced, smeared from the face of the water. 
Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all Imshal- 
lah and I had had to endure at their foul hands ! Im- 
shallah, perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood, 
took it all with the rather languid interest one would 
expect from a lady of her quality ; but I — well, I fear 
very much that I was leaning out over the "bows," at 
an angle not wholly safe under the circumstances, 
and registering "ghoulish glee" at the exact point 
where Roos had told me three times that I must be 
running up and down in the wake of Ike and regis- 
tering "great anxiety." 

As there was no stopping the raft within a mile 
or two of the foot of the rapid, it had been arranged 
that we should launch the skiff as soon as we were 
through the worst water, and pull in to the first fav- 
ourable eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was 
Ike bellowing to me to come and lend him a hand with 
the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my position 
at the "bow," where, "thumbs down" at every clash, 
I had been egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools. 
The current was still very swift, so that Ike was car- 
ried down a considerable distance before making a 
landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with 
camera and tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen 
minutes elapsed before they pushed off in pursuit of 
the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run a 
couple of miles farther down river before Earl found 
a stretch sufficiently quiet to swing her round and 
check her way by towing up against the current. 

In running down to this point the raft had splashed 
through a slashing bit of riffle, which I afterwards 



248 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

learned was called Middle Rapid locally. There was 
a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand, 
it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had 
put the skiff into so far; but, as it appeared there 
would be no difficulty in steering a course in 
fairly smooth water to the left of tli^ rollers, 
I was not greatly concerned over it. Pres- 
ently Ike came pulling round the bend at a great rate, 
and the next thing I knew Imshallah was flounder- 
ing right down the middle of the frosty-headed com- 
bers. Twice or thrice I saw the "V" of her bow shoot 
skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge against a 
fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more 
evenly, and shortly was in smoother water. It was 
distinctly the kind of thing she did best, and she had 
come through with flying colours. Roos was grinning 
when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of 
green about the gills. "Why didn't you head her into 
that smooth stretch on the left?" I asked. ''You had 
the steering paddle." "I tried to hard enough," he 
replied, still grinning, "but Ike wouldn't have it. 
Said he kinda suspected she'd go through that white 
stuff all right, and wanted to see if his suspicions 
were correct." And that was old Ike Emerson to 
a "T." 

We wallowed on through French Rapids and 
Hawk Creek Rapids in the next hour, and past the 
little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in 
the autumnal red and gold of its clustering orchards. 
Ike, pacing the "bridge" with me, said that they used 
to make prime peach brandy at Peach, and reckoned 
that p'raps . . . "No," I cut in decisively; ''I have 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 249 

no desire to return to Kettle Falls." I had jumped 
at the chance to draw Ike on that remarkable up- 
river journey of his after the disaster in Hell Gate, 
but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts as 
to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be 
explained. 

We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky 
walls of which reared higher and higher in fantastic 
pinnacles, spires and weird castellations the deeper 
we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been 
painters at work, too, and with colourings brighter and 
more varied than any I had believed to exist outside 
of the canyons of the Colorado and the Yellowstone. 
Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and 
vivid streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures 
were fresh, but had changed to maroon and terra 
cotta under the action of the weather. A fluted cliff- 
face, touched by the air-brush of the declining sun, 
flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be look- 
ing at it through a rosy mist. There were intenser 
blocks and masses of colours showing in vivid lumps 
on a buttressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched 
before we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve 
shadows that drenched the chasm as the sun dropped 
out of sight. From the heights it must have been a 
brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows 
as desert sunsets always are ; but looking out through 
the purple mists of the great gorge there was only a 
flutter of bright pennons — crimson, gold, polished 
bronze and dusky olive green — streaming across an 
ever widening and narrowing notch of jagged rock, 
black and opaque like splintered ebony. For a quarter 



250 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of an hour we seemed to be steering for those shimmer- 
ing pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden 
up-thrust of black wall cut them off like a sliding 
door. By the time we were headed west again the 
dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out 
of the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transpar- 
ent black, pricked with the twinkle of kindling stars. 
Only by the absence of stars below could one trace the 
blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering 
cliffs. 

No one had said anything to me about an all-day- 
and-all-night schedule for the raft, and, as a matter 
of fact, running in the night had not entered into the 
original itinerary at all. The reason we were bump- 
ing along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no 
more idea of time than an Oriental, had pushed off 
from Gerome an hour late, wasted another unneces- 
sary hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel 
at the general store, and, as a consequence, had been 
overtaken by night ten miles above the point he 
wanted to make. As there was no fast water inter- 
vening, and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent, 
Ike had simply gone right on ahead regardless. 
When I asked him if it wasn't a bit risky, he said he 
thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had 
floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn't 
"alius bumped." If he could see to tighten up 
stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to be able to 
see rocks, " 'cose rocks was a sight bigger'n pegs." 

It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of 
his reassuring philosophy by smearing the end of his 
thumb with a mallet that Earl's night-owl eyes 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 251 

played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock. 
It may well have been a very small rock, and it 
was doubtless submerged a foot or more ; so there was 
no use expecting a man to see the ripple above it 
when there wasn't hght enough to indicate the passage 
of his hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl's 
at all, and even the optimistic Ike had claimed no 
more than that he hadn't "alius bumped." Nor was 
it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely 
hesitated a few seconds, swung part way round, 
slipped free again and, her head brought back at the 
pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of 
striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man 
off his feet. (The only reason Roos fell and pulped 
his ear was because he had failed to set himself at the 
right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing 
that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of 
wood which, being unsecurely stacked, toppled over 
when she struck. Luckily, the boat was parked on 
the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have 
been hard to pick up either before morning, and 
Roos would hardly have lasted. The wood was a 
total loss to Ike, of course ; but he was less concerned 
about that than he was over the fact that it reduced 
her "freeboard" on that quarter by three feet, so that 
she wouldn't make so much of a "showin' in the pic- 
ters." He did raise a howl the next morning, though. 
That was when he found that his old denim jacket 
had gone over with the cordwood. It wasn't the 
"wamus" itself he minded so much, he said, but the 
fact that in one of that garment's pockets had been 
stored the milk chocolate which he was using to alien- 



252 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ate the affections of the Dutchman's collie. "It's 
all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at the fust 
offsta't," he philosophied bitterly; "an' naow I'll be 
losin' mah jump." Rather keen on the psychology 
of alienation, that observation of old Ike, it struck 
me. 

It was along toward nine o'clock, and shortly after 
the abrupt walls of the canyon began to fall away 
somewhat, that a light appeared on the left bank. 
Making a wide circle just above what had now be- 
come a glowing window-square. Earl brought the 
raft's head up-stream and swung her in against the 
bank. The place was marked Creston on the maps, 
but appeared to be spoken of locally as Halberson's 
Ferry. We spent the night with the hospitable Hal- 
bersons, who ran the ferry across to the Colville 
Reservation side and operated a small sawmill when 
logs were available. Earl slept at his ranch, a few 
miles away on the mesa. 

The night was intensely cold, and I was not sur- 
prised to find icicles over a foot long on the flume 
behind the house in the morning. The frozen ground 
returned a metallic clank to the tread of my hob- 
nailed boots as I stepped outside the door. Then I 
gave a gasp of amazement, for what did I see but Ike 
running — with a light, springing step — right along 
the surface of the river? At my exclamation one of 
the Halbersons left off toweling and came over to 
join me. "What's wrong?" he asked, swinging his 
arms to keep warm. "Wrong!" I ejaculated; "look 
at that! I know this isn't Galilee; but you don't 
mean to tell me the Columbia has frozen over during 



I 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 253 

the night!" "Hardly that," was the laughing answer. 
"Ike's not running on either the ice or the water; he's 
just riding a water-soaked log to save walking. It's 
an old trick of his. Not many can do it like he can." 
And that was all there was to it. Ike had spotted a 
drift-log stranded a short distance up-river, and was 
simply bringing it down the easiest way so as to lash 
it to the raft and take it to market. But I should 
have hated to have seen a thing like that "water- 
walking" effect in those long ago days on the Ca- 
nadian Big Bend, when we used to prime our break- 
fast coffee with a couple of fingers of "thirty per 
overproof." 

We cast off at nine-thirty, after Ike had laid in 
some more "component parts" of his mighty sweep 
at the little sawmill. Although less deeply encan- 
yoned than through the stretch down which we passed 
the previous night, there were still enormously high 
cliffs on both sides of the river. Trees and brush 
were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the gen- 
eral aspect was becoming more and more like the 
semi-arid parts of the Colorado Desert. The col- 
ouring was somewhat less vivid than the riot in the can- 
yon above, but was almost equally varied. The colour- 
effect was diversified along this part of the river by 
the appearance of great patches of rock-growing 
lichen, shading through half a dozen reds and browns 
to the most delicate amethyst and sage-green. At 
places it was impossible to tell from the river where 
the mineral pigments left off and the vegetable coat- 
ing began. 

The river was broad and widening, with a compar- 



254 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

atively slow current and only occasional stretches of 
white water. I took the occasion to launch the skiff 
and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line 
on the speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth 
water I found I had the legs of her about three-to- 
one, and in rapids of about two-to-one. From this 
I figured that she did not derive more than from a 
mile and a half to two miles an hour of her speed 
from the launch. I only raced her through one bit 
of rapid, and she was such a poor sport about the 
course that I refused to repeat the stunt. Just as I 
began to spurt past her down through the jumping 
white caps she did a sort of a side-slip and crowded 
me out of the channel and into a rather messy souse- 
hole. The outraged Imshallah gulped a big mouth- 
ful, but floundered through right-side up, as she 
always seemed able to do in that sort of stuff. But 
I pulled into an eddy and let the hulking old wood- 
pile have the right-of-way, declining Earl's tooted 
challenge for a brush in the riffle immediately follow- 
ing. A monster that could eat whirlpools alive wasn't 
anything for a skiff to monkey with the business end 
of. I boarded her respectfully by the stern and 
pulled Imshallah up after me. 

The gi'eat bald dome of White Rock, towering a 
thousand feet above the left bank of the river, sig- 
nalled our approach to Hell Gate. Towing across a 
broad reach of quiet water, Earl laid the raft against 
the left bank about half a mile above where a pair of 
black rock jaws, froth-flecked and savage, seemed 
closing together in an attempt to bite the river in two. 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 255 

That was as close as it was safe to stop the raft, Earl 
explained as we made fast the mooring lines, for the 
current began to accelerate rapidly almost immedi- 
ately below. There were some shacks and an ancient 
apple orchard on the bench above, and Ike came over 
to whisper that they used to make some mighty kicky 
cider there once upon a time, and perhaps. ... I 
did not need the prompting of Earl's admonitory 
head-shake. "Get a jump on you with the sweep," I 
said, "while Earl and I go down and help Roos set 
up. There'll be time enough to talk about cider be- 
low Hell Gate." I saw a somewhat (to judge from a 
distance) Bacchantic ciderette picking her way down 
the bench bank to the raft as the launch sped off down 
stream, but if Ike realized dividends from the visit 
there was never anything to indicate it. 

Although Hell Gate is a long ways from being the 
worst rapid on the Columbia, it comes pretty near to 
qualifying as the worst looking rapid. A long black 
reef, jutting out from the left bank, chokes the 
river into a narrow channel and forces it over 
against the rocky wall on the right. It shoots 
between these obstructions with great velocity, only 
to split itself in two against a big rock island a hun- 
dred yards farther down. The more direct channel 
is to the right, but it is too narrow to be of use. The 
main river, writhing like a wounded snake after being 
bounced off the sheer wall of the island, zigzags on 
through the black basaltic barrier in a course shaped 
a good deal like an elongated letter "Z." Hell Gate 
is very much like either the Great or Little Dalles 



256 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake — 
a rapid shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just 
as much kick in it. 

After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, 
Roos found a place about half way down the left side 
of the jagged gorge from which he could command 
the raft rounding the first leg of the "Z" and running 
part of the second leg. It would have taken a half 
dozen machines to cover the whole run through, but 
the place he had chosen was the one which would 
show the most one camera could be expected to get. 
It would miss entirely the main thing — the fight to 
keep the raft from bumping the rock island and split- 
ting in two like the river did. That could not be 
helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that 
would have caught very little else, and we desired to 
show something of the general character of the gorge 
and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark to 
the effect that, if the raft did break up, probably the 
biggest part of the wreck would come down his side, 
was cutting himself a "sylvan frame" through the 
branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we left him 
to go to the launch. 

Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple 
of men from the farm-house when we got back to the 
raft. He had completed the sweep, he said, but as 
he had forgotten to provide any "pin" to hang it on 
he didn't quite know what to do. Perhaps we had 
better go up to the farm-house and have dinner first, 
and then maybe he would think of something. The 
thought of keeping Roos — whom I had seen on the 
verge of apoplexy over a half minute delay once 





RAFT IN TOW 07 LAUNCH NEAU MOUTH OF SAN FOIL (above) 
I::E AT THE SWEEP TELOW HELL CATE ibclciv) 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 257 

he was ready for action — standing with crooked elbow 
at his crank, waiting an hour or more for the raft to 
shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as 
so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh 
without risk of rolling into the river. When I finally 
got my breath and sight back, I found Earl's ready 
mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory adze 
handle as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike 
were already rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch 
had swung the raft out into the current and we were 
headed for Hell Gate. 

The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeni- 
ously constructed. Its handle was a four-inch-in-di- 
ameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in length. One 
end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, 
and the other split to receive the blade. The latter 
was a twelve-foot plank, a foot and a half in width 
and three inches in thickness, roughly rounded and 
hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at 
a shght upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike 
had contrived to centre the weight of the whole sweep 
so nicely that you could swing it on its adze-handle 
pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean; 
submerged, five or six men would have been none too 
few to force that colossal blade through the water. 
Ike admitted that himself, but reckoned that the two 
of us ought to be 'better'n nothin' 'tall.' " 

As we swung out into the quickening current, I 
mentioned to Ike that, as I had never even seen a 
sweep of that kind in operation, much less worked at 
it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me 
some idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how. 



258 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"Ye're right," he assented, after ejecting the inevita- 
ble squirt of tobacco and parking the residuary quid 
out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a nut ; 
"ye're right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an' 
r'h'rsal." As usual, Ike overestimated the time at his 
disposal; nevertheless, his intensive method of train- 
ing was so much to the point that I picked up a 
"right smart bit o' sweep dope" before we began to 
cram into the crooked craw of Hell Gate. 

This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take 
through, Ike explained, but he'd never had so power- 
ful a motor launch ; and Earl was the best man in his 
line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch 
would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the 
rock island where the river split "agin" it; but swing- 
ing out the head would have the effect of swinging in 
the stern. We were to man the sweep for the purpose 
of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We 
would onty have to stroke one way, but we'd sure 
have to "jump into it billy hell!" "That being so," I 
suggested, "perhaps we better try a practice stroke or 
two to perfect our teamwork." That struck Ike as 
reasonable, and so we went at it, he on the extreme end 
of the handle, I one "grip" farther along. 

Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to 
elevate the blade, we dipped the latter with a swing- 
ing upward lift and jumped into the stroke. In 
order to keep the blade well submerged, it was neces- 
sary to exert ahnost as much force upward as for- 
ward. The compression on the spine was rather 
awful — especially as I was two or three inches taller 
than Ike, and on top of that, had the "inside" berth. 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 259 

where the handle was somewhat nearer the deck. But 
the blade moved through the water when we both 
straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly 
toward the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the 
blade out of the water, and Ike swung it back through 
the air alone. I had only to "crab-step" back along 
the runway — a couple of planks laid over the cord- 
wood — and be ready for the next stroke. Twice we 
went through that operation, without — so far as I 
could see — having any effect whatever upon the raft ; 
but that was only because I was expecting "skiff- 
action" from a hundred tons of logs. We really 
must have altered the course considerably, for pres- 
ently a howl came back from Earl to "do it t'other 
way," as we were throwing her out of the channel. 
By the time we had "corrected" with a couple of 
strokes in the opposite direction the launch was dip- 
ping over the crest of the "intake." Straightening 
up but not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to "let 
'er ride fer a minnit," but to stand-by ready. 

That swift opening run through the outer portal of 
Hell Gate offered about the only chance I had for a 
"look-see." My recollections of the interval that fol- 
lowed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted 
that the water of the black-walled chasm down which 
we were racing was swift and deep, but not — right 
there at least — too rough for the skiff to ride. I 
noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead 
threw off two unequal back-curving waves, as a bat- 
tleship will do when turning at full speed. I remem- 
ber thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would try to 
avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand 



260 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

channel. It looked too hard a pull to make the main 
one to the left; and the latter would have the worst 
whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the 
way of the river that sharp-nosed island was ; and not 
only of the river, but of anything coming down the 
river. With that up-stabbing point out of the stream, 
how easy it would be ! But since . . . 

"Stan'-by!" came in a growl from Ike. " 'Memba 
naow — 'billy hell' when I says 'jump!' " By the fact 
that he spat forth the whole of his freshly-bitten quid 
I had a feeling that the emergency jvas considerably 
beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was 
of Earl's sharply altering his course just before he 
nosed into the roaring back-curving wave thrown off 
by the island and beginning to tow to the left with 
his line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The stac- 
cato of his accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a 
machine-gun through the heavy rumble of the rapid, 
and I knew that he had thrown it wide open even be- 
fore the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers be- 
gan to tumble over onto the stern of the launch. On a 
reduced scale, it was the same sort of in-tumbling 
jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the appear- 
ance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from 
quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like 
that means that the spinning screws are meeting 
almost solid resistance in the water. 

Ike's shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I 
knew that the bow was swinging out only from the 
way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted 
"Now!" we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep- 
handle, just as we had practised it, then dipped the 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 2G1 

blade and drove it hard to the right. Four or five 
times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, 
it seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at 
the right time, shooting by the foam-whitened fang 
of the black point by a good ten feet. The back- 
curving wave crashed down in solid green on the star- 
board quarter — but harmlessly. There was water 
enough to have swamped a hatteau, but against a raft 
the comber had knocked its head off for nothing. 

Under Ike's assurance that the battle would all be 
over but the shouting in half a minute, I had put 
about everything I had into those half dozen mighty 
pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely 
and resume my survey of the scenery as we cleared the 
point, but Ike's mumbled "Nother one!" brought me 
back to the sweep again. Evidently there had been 
some kind of a slip-up. "Wha' 'smatter?" I gur- 
gled, as we swayed onto the kicking handle, and 
"Engin's on blink," rumbled the chesty reply. "Gotta 
keep'er off wi' sweep." 

It had been the motor-boat's role, after keeping the 
head of the raft clear of the point of the island by a 
strong side pull, to tow out straight ahead again as 
soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl was 
trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped 
back), but with two or three cylinders missing was 
not able to do much more than straighten out the tow- 
line. As the raft was already angling to the channel, 
the fact the current was swifter against the side of 
the island had the tendency to throw her stern in that 
direction. It was up to the sweep to keep her from 
striking, just as it had been at the point. What made 



262 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

it worse now was that the possible points of impact 
were scattered all the way along for two or three 
hundred yards, while the launch was giving very 
little help. 

A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all 
day long without getting more than a good comfort- 
able weariness, and so I coidd have done had I been 
properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place 
on the sweep, and, on top of that, had allowed my in- 
fantile enthusiasm to lead me into trying to scoop 
half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke. 
And so it was that when we came to a real show- 
down, I found myself pretty hard put to come 
through with what was needed. Ike's relentless 
" 'Nother one!" at the end of each soul-and-body 
wracking stroke was all that was said, but the 'tween- 
teethed grimness of its utterance was more potent 
as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphu- 
rous curses. Ike was saving his breath, and I didn't 
have any left to pour out my feelings with. 

We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, 
and I have an idea that the back-waves thrown off 
by the projecting points had about as much to do 
with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such 
waves will often buffer off a canoe or hatteau, and 
they must have helped some with the raft. There is 
no doubt, however, that, if the raft had once been 
allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock 
island would have had to change shape or else hold up 
the million or so horse-power driving the Columbia. 
That could have only resulted in a one-two-three 
climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 263 

in the order named. Or, to express it in more ac- 
curate race-track vernacular; "Island," first; "Colum- 
bia," second; "Raft," nowhere! 

My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and 
down along the exposed ends of all its connecting 
nerves, when a throaty "Aw right!" from Ike sig- 
nalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end 
of the trailing sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had 
swung into a big eddy at the foot of the island, and 
that the launch, with its engine still spraying scat- 
tered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry 
her in to the right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids 
of Hell Gate were still below us, but Earl had e\d- 
dently determined not to run them until his engine 
was hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic 
of him that he didn't offer any explanation as to what 
had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble must have 
been a consequence of the terrific strain put 
on the engine in towing the head of the raft 
clear of the upper point of the island. At 
the end of a quarter hour's tinkering Earl reckoned 
that the engine would go "purty good" now; least- 
ways, he hoped so, for there was nothing more he 
could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up 
again below, he ran across and picked up Roos and 
the camera before casting off. 

Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, 
white water, and we ran them without trouble. Roos 
set up on the raft and shot a panorama of the reeling 
rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky 
walls as they slid past. Then he made a close-up of 
the weird, undulating Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the 



264 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"deck" of the raft, and finally, when we had recov- 
ered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the 
sweep. To save time, we had Imich on the raft, tak- 
ing Earl's portion up to him in the skiff. 

Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four 
or five men to handle the raft in Box Canyon, was 
scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a farm 
or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull 
ahead in the skiff and he would dash ashore and pur- 
sue intensive recruiting until the raft had come up 
and gone on down river. Then we -would push off 
and chase it, repeating the performance as soon as 
another apple orchard or ferry tower crept out be- 
yond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a man 
to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as 
darkness was falling on the river. Most of the men 
Ike talked to took one look at the nearing raft and 
cut him off with a "Good-night" gesture, the signifi- 
cance of which was not lost on me even in the distant 
skiff. The nearest we came to landing any one was 
at Plum, where the half-breed ferry-man said he 
would have gone if it hadn't been for the fact that his 
wife was about to become a mother. It wasn't that 
he was worried on the woman's account (she did that 
sort of thing quite regularly without trouble), but 
he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was 
going to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on 
hand to be sure they didn't put anything over on him. 

At Clark's Ferry an old pal of Ike's, whom he had 
confidently counted on getting, not only refused to 
go when he saw the raft, but even took the old river 
rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after 



RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE 265 

the manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed 
after that, and spent the next hour slouching back and 
forth across the stern runway, nursing the handle of 
the gentlj-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet 
kitten. He was deeply introspective, and seemed to 
be brooding over something. It was not until the next 
morning that he admitted that the raft had not proved 
quite as handy as he had calculated. 

Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a 
somewhat opener canyon than the black gorge we had 
threaded the night before. It was Spring Canyon 
we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. 
No one was living there, he said, but it was a conven- 
ient place for the ranchers from up on the plateau to 
come and get the wood. Earl found the place and 
made the landing with not even a window-light to 
guide. We moored to the lower logs of the cedar 
raft, most of which was now Ijnng high and dry on 
the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked sup- 
per on the bank and — after Roos had deftly picked 
the lock with a bent wire — slept on the floor of an 
abandoned farmhouse on the bench above. 

Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline- 
burned back during the day, and was evidently suf- 
fering not a little discomfort from the -chafing of his 
woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, 
and when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up 
and shake out an old white table-cloth that had been 
thrown in one corner. When I went down to the raft 
a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist 
and Earl engaged in swathing the burned back in the 
folds of the white table-cloth. As the resultant bundle 



266 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was rather too bulky to allow a shirt to be drawn over 
it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he 
was, for all the world like "the noblest Roman of them 
all" — from neck to the waist, that is. The long, droop- 
ing, tobacco-stained moustaches, no less than the sag- 
ging overalls, would have had rather a "foreign" look 
on the Forum Romanum, 



CHAPTER XI 

BY 1.AUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 

There was plainly something on Ike's mind all 
through breakfast, but what it was didn't transpire 
until I asked him what time he would be ready to push 
off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable 
truth, he gave the free end of his "toga" a fling back 
over his shoulder and announced that he had come to 
the conclusion that the raft was too big and too loosely 
constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could 
count ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate 
without smashing up. What he proposed to do was to 
take the biggest and straightest logs from both the 
rafts and make a small, solid one that would stand any 
amount of banging from the rocks. He never gave 
a thought to his life when working on the river, he 
declared, but it would be a shame to run an almost 
certain risk of losing so big a lot of logs and cord- 
wood. The wreckage would be sure to be salvaged 
by farmers who would otherwise have to buy wood 
from him, so he would be a double loser in case the 
raft went to pieces. I told him that I quite appreci- 
ated his feelings (about the wood and logs, I mean), 
and asked how long he figured it would take to get 
the logs out of the old rafts and build a new one. He 
reckoned it could be done in two or three days, if we 
hustled. As I had already learned that any of Ike's 

267 



268 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

estimates of time had to be multiplied by at least two 
to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our 
rafting voyage was at an end. We already had some 
very good raft pictures, and as a few hundred yards 
of the run through Box Canyon would be all that 
could be added to these, it did not seem worth any- 
thing like the delay building the new raft would im- 
pose. As far as the sale of the wood and logs was 
concerned, Ike said he would rather have the stuff 
where it was than in Bridgeport. 

So, quite unexpectedly but in all gaod feeling, we 
prepared to abandon the raft and have the motor- 
boat take the skiff in tow as far as Chelan. This 
would make up a part of the time we had lost in wait- 
ing for the raft in the first place, and also save the 
portage round Box Canyon. It was quite out of the 
question venturing into that gorge in our small boat, 
Earl said, but he had made it before with his launch, 
and reckoned he could do it again. We settled with 
Ike on a basis of twenty dollars a day for his time, out 
of which he would pay for the launch. As his big 
raft of logs and firewood was brought to its destina- 
tion for nothing by this arrangement, he was that 
much ahead. For the further use of the launch, we 
were to pay Earl ten dollars a day and buy the gas- 
oline. 

We helped Ike get the raft securely moored, had 
an early lunch on the rocks, and pushed off at a little 
after noon, the skiff in tow of the launch on a short 
painter. A few miles along Ike pointed out a depres- 
sion, high above the river on the left side, which he 
said was the mouth of the Grand Coulee, the ancient 
bed of the Columbia. I have already mentioned a 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 269 

project which contemplates bringing water from the 
Pend d'Oreille to irrigate nearly two million acres of 
semi-arid land of the Columbia basin. A project 
that some engineers consider will bring water to the 
same land more directly and at a much less cost per 
acre is to build a dam all the way across the Columbia 
below the mouth of the Grand Coulee, and use the 
power thus available to pmiip sixteen thousand sec- 
ond-feet into the old channel of that river. Mr. James 
O 'Sullivan, a contractor of Port Huron, Michigan, 
who has made an exhaustive study of this latter proj- 
ect, writes me as follows: 

"A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above 
low water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the 
way to the Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one 
million dollars would pay all the flooding damages. A dam 
300 feet high would be 4,300 feet long on the crest, and 
would require about 5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. It 
would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed 100 feet below 
water, about forty million dollars. It is estimated that the 
power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines and discharge 
pipes would cost fifteen million dollars. . . . From the 
Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than 
forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide, 
flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of get- 
ting water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam 
and power. Such a dam would require about five years to 
build, and it would create out of a worthless desert a na- 
tional estate of four hundred and fifty million dollars, and 
the land would produce annually in crops two hundred and 
seventy-five million. . . . An irrigation district is now 
being formed in Central Washington, and it is proposed to 
proceed at once with the core drilling of the dam-site, to 



270 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

determine the nature and depth of bedrock, which seems to 
be the only question left unsettled which affects the feasi- 
bility of the project. The Northwestern states are all in a 
league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and 
there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be 
favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to 
construct this great project, which will reclaim an area 
equal to the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the 
U. S. Government to-day. . . . It is considered now that 
where power is free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is 
perfectly feasible." 

Which of these two great projects for the recla- 
mation of the desert of the Columbia Basin has the 
most to recommend is not a question upon which a 
mere river voyageur, who is not an engineer, can offer 
an intelligent opinion. That the possibilities of such 
reclamation, if it can be economically effected, are 
incalculably immense, however, has been amply dem- 
onstrated. From source to mouth, the Columbia to- 
day is almost useless for power, irrigation and even 
transportation. The experience of those who, lured 
on by abnormal rainfalls of a decade or more ago, 
tried dry farming in this region border closely on the 
tragic. And the tragedy has been all the more poig- 
nant from the fact that the disaster of drought has 
overtaken them year after year with the Columbia 
running half a million second-feet of water to waste 
right before their eyes. I subsequently met a rancher 
in Wenatchee who said the only good the Columbia 
ever was to a man who tried to farm along it in the 
dry belt was as a place to drown himself in when he 
went broke. 





THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (above) 

OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT. 
MCDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) {beloiv) 




NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (ahove) 
THE COLUMBIA ABOVE BOX CANYON (beloiv) 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 271 

The rock-littered channel of Moneghan's or Buck- 
ley's Rapids was easily threaded by the launch, and 
Equilibrium or "Jumbo" Rapids, three miles lower 
down, did not prove a serious obstruction. The offi- 
cial name is the former, and was given the riffle by 
Symons on account of a round-topped rock which 
rolled back and forth in the current because of its 
unstable equilibrium. The local name of "Jumbo" 
derives from the fact that this same rolling rock has 
something of the appearance of an elephant, when 
viewed from a certain angle. Ten miles more of deep, 
evenly-flowing water brought us to Mah-kin Rapids 
and the head of Nespilem Canyon. The next twenty- 
four miles, terminating at the foot of what is officially 
called Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool (Box Canyon 
in local nomenclature), is the fastest stretch of equal 
length on the Columbia except on the Big Bend in 
Canada. It is one continuous succession of rapids, 
eddies and whirlpools all the way, and the much feared 
Box Canyon is a fitting finale. I was distinctly glad 
to be running through in a motor-boat rather than 
the skiff. As to the raft, I never have been able to 
make up my mind as to just how she would have 
fared. 

The roar of the savage half-mile tumble of Mah- 
kin Rapids was a fitting overture to the main per- 
formance. The river narrows down sharply between 
precipitous banks, and most of the rocks from the 
surrounding hills seem to have rolled into the middle 
of the channel. There was an awful mess of churned 
water even where the river was deepest, and I 
wouldn't have been quite comfortable heading into it 



272 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

even in the launch. Earl seemed rather of the same 
mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every 
time one of the big combers lurched over at him. 
With the engine running like a top, he kept her in 
comparatively good water all the way through. It 
was a striking lesson in the value of power in running 
a rapid — as long as the power doesn't fail you. 

Rock-peppered rapids followed each other every 
mile or two from the foot of Mah-kin, but — thanks 
to Earl's nose for the best channel — we were not tak- 
ing more than an occasional shower of spray over the 
bows where the water was whitest. It was not too 
rough for reading, and, anxious to prepare Roos for 
what he was about to experience at Kalichen Falls 
and Collision Rock, I dug out Symons' report and 
ran rapidly through the dramatic description of how 
his party fared in running the sinister gorge ahead. 
It seems to me rather a classic of its kind, and I am 
setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and 
Ike that afternoon in the cockpit of the launch. I 
only wish I could complete the effect with the diorama 
of the flying canyon walls, the swirling waters of the 
river, and the obligato in duet by the roaring rapids 
and the sharply hitting engine. 

"The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge 
masses of black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and 
this continues for several miles, forming a characteristic 
picture of Columbia River scenery. The complete . . . 
lifelessness of the scene makes it seem exceedingly wild, almost 
unearthly. And so w^e plunge along swiftly through the 
rolling water, with huge rocks looming up, now on one side 
and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar is bearing 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 273 

us onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our voyage 
most dreaded, the terrible Kaliclien Falls and Whirlpool Rap- 
ids. We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the 
tops of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of 
the tumbling waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases, 
while brave old Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in 
their own tongue. He knows that everything depends upon 
his steering and their rowing or backing at the right moment, 
with all the strength they possess. Years ago he was in a 
Hudson Bay Company batteau which capsized in these very 
rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men eight perished in 
the water or on the rocks. 

"The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by 
stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their 
gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly 
about his head ; poles and extra oars are laid ready in con- 
venient places to reach should they become necessary, and 
then with a shout the Indians seize their oars and commence 
laying to them with all their strength. We are rushing 
forward at a fearful rate, owing to the combined exertions 
of the Indians and the racing current, and we shudder at the 
thought of striking any of the huge black rocks near which 
we glide. Now we are fairly in the rapids, and our boat is 
rushing madly through the foam and billows ; the Indians 
are shouting at every stroke in their wild, savage glee ; it is 
infectious ; we shout too, and feel the wild exultation which 
comes to men in moments of great excitement and danger. 
Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled 
waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by 
the action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft, 
some falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the 
waist. This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as 
we draw near with great velocity to a huge rock which ap- 
pears dead ahead. 



274 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

"Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold 
as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, 
backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick 
stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our 
right hand. Another command, and answering shout, and the 
oars bend like willows as the Indians struggle to get the 
boat out of the strong eddy into which Pierre had thrown 
her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes the rock like a 
flash, within less than an oar's length of it, and we shout for 
joy and breathe freely again. . . . 

"For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our 
staunch crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next 
struggle, which soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy 
rapids are reached. Here the swells are very high and grand, 
and our boat at one time seems to stand almost perpendicu- 
larly." ("Them's Eagle Rapids," Ike interrupted; "sloppier 
'n 'ell, but straight.") 

"For about nine miles further the river continues studded 
with rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until 
we reach Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become 
thicker . . . and the water fierce and wild. For a mile 
more we plunge and toss through the foaming, roaring 
water, amid wild yells from our Indian friends, and we 
emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to be as 
rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered. 
We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all 
the Nespilem Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly re- 
lieved. ..." 

Ike, renewing his quid, observed that they didn't 
call it Nespilem Canyon any more, for the reason that 
that sounded too much like "Let's spill 'em!" and 
there was enough chance of that without asking for 
it. Roos, in bravado, asked Ike if he was going to 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 275 

strip down like Symons' Indians did. The old Roman 
replied by pulling on a heavy mackinaw over his 
"toga," saying that he'd rather have warmth than 
action once he was out in the "Columby." That led 
me to ask him — with a touch of bravado on my own 
account — how long it would take him to "submarine" 
from Box Canyon to Kettle Falls. He grinned a bit 
sourly at that, and started slacking the lashings on 
the sweeps and pike-poles. Roos was just tying a 
red handkerchief round his head when Earl beckoned 
him forward to take the wheel while he gave the en- 
gine a final hurried tuning. Ike, saying that we would 
be hitting "White Cap" just round the next bend, 
gave me brief but pointed instructions in the use of 
sweep and pike-pole in case the engine went wrong. 
He had spat forth his quid again, just as at Hell Gate, 
and his unmuffled voice had a strange and penetrat- 
ing timbre. 

White Cap Rapids are well named. Two rocky 
points converge at the head and force all the con- 
flicting currents of the river into a straight, steep 
channel, heavily littered with boulders and fanged 
with outcropping bedrock. In that currents from 
opposite sides of the river are thrown together in one 
mad tumble of wallowing waters, it is much like Gor- 
don Rapids, on the Big Bend. If anything, it is the 
rougher of the two, making up in volume what it 
lacks in drop. It is a rapid that would be particularly 
mean for a small boat, from the fact that there would 
be no way of keeping out of the middle of it, and that 
is a wet place — very. The launch had the power to 
hold a course just on the outer right edge of the rough 



276 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

water, and so made a fairly comfortable passage of it. 

With the "intake" above Kalichen Falls full in 
view a half mile distant, Earl went back to his engine 
as we shot out at the foot of "White Cap" and gave 
it a few little "jiggering" caresses — much as a rider 
pats the neck of his hunter as he comes to a jump — 
before the final test. Then he covered it carefully 
with a double canvas and went back to the wheel. 
Roos he kept forward, standing-by to take the wheel 
or tinker the engine in case of emergency. The lad, 
though quite without "river sense," was a first-class 
mechanic and fairly dependable at the steering wheel 
providing he was told what to do. 

The sounding board of the rocky walls gave a deep 
pulsating resonance to the heavy roar ahead, but it 
was not until we dipped over the "intake" that the 
full volume of it assailed us. Then it came with a 
rush, a palpable avalanche of sound that impacted on 
the ear-drums with the raw, grinding roar of a pass- 
ing freight train. It was not from the huge rollers the 
launch was skirting so smartly that this tearing, rend- 
ing roar came, but from an enormous black rock 
almost dead ahead. It was trying to do the same 
thing that big island in the middle of Hell Gate had 
tried to do, and was succeeding rather better. The 
latter had been able to do no more than split the river 
down the middle; this one was forcing the whole 
stream to do a side-step, and pretty nearly a somer- 
sault — hence Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool. Col- 
lision Rock was distinctly impressive, even from a 
launch. 

The sun was just dipping behind the southern wall 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 277 

of Box Canyon (how funky I became later, when I 
was alone, about going into a rapid in that slanting, 
deceptive evening light!) as the launch hit the rough 
water. There was dancing iridescence in the flung 
foam-spurts above the combers, and at the right of 
Collision Rock the beginning of a rainbow which I 
knew would grow almost to a full circle when we 
looked back from below the fall. I snapped once with 
my kodak into the reeling tops of the waves that 
raced beside us, and then started to wind up to have a 
fresh film for the rock and the crowning rainbow. 
That highly artistic exposure was never made. 

Earl, instead of shutting off his engine as he did 
in running Spokane Rapids, opened up all the wider 
as he neared the barrier and its refluent wave. This 
was because the danger of striking submerged rocks 
was less than that of butting into that one outcrop 
of ragged reef that was coming so near to throwing 
the river over on its back. If the launch was to avoid 
telescoping on Collision Rock as the Columbia was 
doing, it must get enough way on to shoot across the 
current into the eddy on the left. That was what 
Earl was preparing for when he opened up the engine. 
With both boat and current doing well over twenty 
miles an hour, we were literally rushing down at the 
rocky barrier with tlie speed of an express train when 
Earl spun the wheel hard over and drove her sharply 
to the left. That was when I stopped kodaking. 

In spite of the rough water, the launch had been re- 
markably dry until her course was altered. Then she 
made up for lost time. The next ten or fifteen sec- 
onds was an unbroken deluge. With a great up-toss 



278 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ofswake, she heeled all of forty-five degrees to star- 
board at the turn, seeing which, the river forthwith 
began piling over her port or up-stream side and mak- 
ing an astonishingty single-minded attempt to push 
her on the rest of the way under. Failing in that (for 
her draught was too great and her engine set too low 
to make her easily capsizable), the river tried to ac- 
complish the same end by swamping her. Fore and 
aft the water came pouring over in a solid green flood, 
and kept right on pouring until Earl, having driven 
through to the point he wanted, turned her head down 
stream again and let her right herself" 

The water was swishing about my knees for a few 
moments in the cockpit, and it must have been worse 
than that forward. Then it drained down into the 
bilge without, apparently, greatly affecting her buoy- 
ancy. The higher-keyed staccato of the engine cut 
sharply through the heavier roar of the falls. It was 
still popping like a machine-gun, without a break. 
Reassured by that welcome sound, Earl orientated 
quickly as he shook the water from his eyes, and then 
put her full at the head of the falls. Just how much 
of a pitch there was at this stage of water I couldn't 
quite make out. Nothing in comparison with the cat- 
aract there at high water (when the river rushes right 
over the top of Collision Rock) certainly; and yet it 
was a dizzy bit of a drop, with rather too deliberate 
a recovery to leave one quite comfortable. For a few 
seconds the launch's head was deeply buried in the 
soft stuff of the souse-hole into which she took her 
header ; the next her bows were high in the air as the 
up-boil caught her. Then her propellers began strik- 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 279 

ing into something solider than air-charged suds, and 
she shot jerkily away in a current so torn with swirls 
that it looked like a great length of twisted green-and- 
white rope. We had missed Collision Rock by thirty 
feet, and given the dreaded whirlpool behind it an 
even wider berth. 

The next thirteen miles we did at a rate that Ike 
figured must have been about the fastest travelling 
ever done on the Columbia. The current runs at 
from ten to twenty miles an hour all the way from the 
head of Box Canyon to Bridgeport, and Earl, racing 
to reach Foster Creek Rapids before it was dark, ran 
just about wide open nearly the whole distance. It 
was real train speed at which we sped down the dark- 
ening gorge — possibly over forty miles an hour at 
times. Earl knew the channel like a book, and said 
there was nothing to bother about in the way of rocks 
as long as he could see. We were out of the closely- 
walled part of the canyon at Eagle Rapids, and the 
sunset glow was bright upon the water ahead. There 
is a series of short, steep riffles here, extending for a 
mile and a half, and Earl slammed right down the 
lot of them on the high. Ike was right about their 
being sloppy, but the beacon of the afterglow gave 
the bearing straight through. Two miles further on 
the river appeared suddenly to be filled with swim- 
ming hippos — round-topped black rocks just showing 
above the water ; but each one was silhouetted against 
a surface that glinted rose and gold, and so was as 
easy to miss as in broad daylight. 

It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek 
Rapids began to drown the rattle of the engine, with 



280 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

only a luminous lilac mist floating above the south- 
western mountains to mark where the sun had set; 
but it was enough — just enough — to throw a glow of 
pale amethyst on the frothy tops of the white-caps, 
leaving the untorn water to roll on in fluid anthra- 
cite. Earl barely eased her at the head, and then 
plunged her down a path of polished ebony, with the 
blank blur of rocks looming close on the right and an 
apparitional line of half-guessed rollers booming 
boisterously to the left. For three-quarters of a mile 
we raced that ghostly Ku-Klux-Klan procession, and 
Roos, who was timing with his radium-faced watch, 
announced that we had made the distance in some- 
thing like seventy seconds. Then there was quieter 
water, and presently the lights of Bridgeport. Earl 
put us off opposite the town, and ran down a quarter 
of a mile farther to get out of the still swiftly-run- 
ning current and berth the launch in a quiet eddy 
below the sawmill. 

Bridgeport, for a town a score of miles from the 
railway, proved unexpectedly metropolitan, with elec- 
tric lights, banks, movie theatres, and a sign at the 
main crossing prohibiting "Left Hand Turns." The 
people, for a country town, showed very diverting 
evidences of sophistication. At the movies that night 
(where we went to get the election returns), they 
continually laughed at the villain and snickered at 
the heroine's platitudinous sub-titles; and finally, 
when word came that it was Harding beyond all 
doubt, they forgot the picture completely and gave 
their undivided attention to joshing the town's only 
avowed Democrat. The victim bore up fairly well as 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 281 

long as his baiters stuck to "straight politics," but 
when they accused him of wearing an imitation leather 
coat made of brown oil-cloth, the shaft got under his 
armour. With a ruddy blush that was the plainest 
kind of a confession of guilt, he pushed out to the 
aisle and beat a disorderly retreat. 

A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he 
had been telling me what his crop would bring the 
while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was trying 
to register pup-innocence and "gold-cannot-buy-me" 
as the villain was choking her) sniffed contemptuously 
as the discomfited Democrat disappeared through the 
swinging doors. "Seems to feel worse about being 
caught with an imitation coat than about being an 
imitation politician. Better send him to Congress!" 
Now wasn't that good for a small town that didn't 
even have a railroad? I've known men of cities of all 
of a hundred thousand, with street cars, municipal 
baths, Carnegie libraries and women's clubs, who 
hadn't the measure of Congress as accurately as that. 
I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport. 

It was down to twelve above when we turned out 
in the morning, with the clear air tingling with frost 
particles and incipient ice-fringes around the eddies. 
Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night be- 
fore and drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport 
the river, which had been running almost due west 
from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off to 
the north. In a slackening current we approached 
the small patch of open country at the mouth of the 
Okinagan. The latter, which heads above the lake 
of the same name in British Columbia, appears an 



282 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

insignificant stream as viewed from the Columbia, and 
one would never suspect that it is navigable for good- 
sized stern-wheelers for a considerable distance above 
its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just 
above the mouth of the Okinagan, is the site of wha-t 
was perhaps the most important of the original Astor 
posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812 
it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and 
ultimately passed under the control of Hudson Bay. 
I could see nothing but a barren flat at this point 
where so much history was made, but a splendid apple 
orchard occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop 
of the bend on the opposite bank. 

The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most north- 
erly point of the Washington Big Bend of the Co- 
lumbia. From there it flows southwesterly for a few 
miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning al- 
most directly south. We passed Brewster without 
landing, but pulled up alongside a big stern-wheeler 
moored against the bank at Potaris, just above the 
swift-running Methow Rapids. It was the Bridge- 
port, and Ike had spoken of her skipper, whom he 
called "Old Cap," many times and with the greatest 
affection. "Old Cap" proved to be the Captain Mc- 
Dermid, who had run the Shoshone down through 
Grand Rapids, and who was rated as the nerviest 
steamer skipper left on the Columbia. 

Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his 
steamer to give us a hand aboard. He had read of 
our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and had 
been on the lookout for several days. At first he had 
watched for a skiff, but later, when he had heard that 



I 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 283 

we had pushed off with Ike on a raft, it was logs he 
had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When 
Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head 
significantly, and said he reckoned it was just as well 
we had changed to the launch for Box Canyon. "It 
isn't everybody that can navigate under water like 
this old rat here," he added, giving Ike a playful prod 
in the ribs. 

As we were planning to go on through to the mouth 
of the Chelan River, in the hope of getting up to the 
lake that afternoon, an hour was the most I could 
stop over on the Bridgeport for a yarn with Cap- 
tain McDermid, where I would have been glad of a 
week. He told me, very simply but graphically, of 
the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of his work 
with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, 
which included a year on the upper Amazon and about 
the same time as skipper of a ferry running from the 
Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke, with a 
shade of sadness, of the Bridgeport and his plans 
for the future. In all the thousand miles of the Co- 
lumbia between the Dalles and its source, she had 
been the last steamer to maintain a regular service. 
(This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course) . 
But the close of the present apple season had marked 
the end. Between the increasing competition of rail- 
ways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the 
candle. He, and his partners in the Bridgeport. 
had decided to try to take her to Portland and offer 
her for sale. She was very powerfully engined and 
would undoubtedly bring a good price — once they 
got her there. But getting her to Portland was the 



284 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

rub. There were locks at the Cascades and the Dal- 
les, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla, 
to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would 
have to be run. It was a big gamble, insurance, of 
course, being out of the question on any terms. The 
Douglas, half the size of the Bridgeport, had 
tried it a couple of months ago, and — well, we would 
see the consequences on the rocks below Cabinet Rap- 
ids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then 
went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn't half as bad. 
Overconfidence, probably, "Old Cap" thought. But 
he felt sure that he would have better luck, especially 
if he went down first and made a good study of Rock 
Island and Priest; and that was one of the things 
that he had wanted to see me about. If there was 
room for him in the skiff, he would like to run through 
with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel 
as we went along. If things were so he could get 
away, he would join us at Wenatchee on our return 
from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without hesi- 
tation, for it would give us the benefit of the expe- 
rience and help of the very best man on that part of 
the Columbia in getting through the worst of the 
rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good 
deal concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock 
Island was to be negotiated, to say nothing of the 
long series of riffles called Priest Rapids, which had 
even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDer- 
mid with the understanding that we would get in 
touch by phone a day or two later, when I knew defi- 
nitely when we would return to the river from Che- 
lan, and make the final arrangements. 



LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON 285 

Leaving Ike on the Bridgeport for a yarn with 
his old friend, we pushed off in the launch for Chelan. 
Methow Rapids, just below the river of that name, 
was the only fast water encountered, and that was a 
good, straight run in a fairly clear channel. We 
landed half a mile below the mouth of the Chelan 
River, where the remains of a road led down through 
the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl 
put about at once and headed back up-stream, expect- 
ing to pick up Ike at Potaris and push on through to 
Bridgeport that evening. 

We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good 
feeling and ynih much regret. Each in his line was 
one of the best men I have ever had to do with. Ike — 
in spite of the extent to which his movements were 
dominated by the maxim that "time is made for 
slaves," or, more likely, for that very reason — was a 
most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able 
to recruit him for another river voyage in the not -too- 
distant future. 



CHAPTER XII 



CHELAN TO PASCO 



For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our 
visit to Lake Chelan : first, because it was entirely in- 
cidental to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because 
one who has only made the run up and down this 
loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. 
Chelan is well named "Beautiful Water." Sixty 
miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff- 
walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, 
it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the 
upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Kootenay 
Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world 
it has few peers. 

The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty- 
five feet in the four miles from the outlet of the lake 
to where it tumbles into the Columbia. It is a foam- 
white torrent all the way, with a wonderful "Horse- 
shoe" gorge near the lower end which has few rivals 
for savage grandeur. One may reach the lake from 
the Columbia by roads starting either north or south 
of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it 
was the more conveniently reached from the ferry- 
man's house where we had left our outfit after land- 
ing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the 
lake, is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright 
shops, and a very comfortable hotel. I have forgot- 
ten the name of the hotel, but not the fact that it 
serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every 

286 



CHELAN TO PASCO 287 

breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is 
the only hotel in America or Europe which has per- 
petuated that now all but extinct ante-bellum cus- 
tom. In case there may be any interested to know — 
even actually to enjoy — what our forefathers had with 
their coffee and mush, I will state that three transcon- 
tinental railways pass within a hundred miles to the 
southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the 
stop-over; and there is the lake besides. 

The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by 
rolling hills, whose fertile soil is admirably adapted 
to apples, now an important industry in that region; 
the upper end is closely walled with mountains and 
high cliffs — really an extremely deep gorge half filled 
with water. Indeed, the distinction of being the 
"deepest furrow Time has wrought on the face of the 
Western Hemisphere" is claimed for upper Chelan 
Lake — this because there are cliffs which rise almost 
vertically for six thousand feet from the water's edge, 
and at a point where the sounding lead has needed 
nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back 
from a rocky bottom which is indented far below the 
level of the sea. 

The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the 
Cascades, in the glaciers of which its feeding streams 
take their rise. The main tributaries are Railroad 
Creek, which flows in from the south about two-thirds 
of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in 
at the head. These two streams are credited with 
some of the finest waterfalls, gorges and cliff and 
glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in North 
America, and it is possible to see the best of both in 



288 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the course of a single "circular" trip by packtram. 
To my great regret, it was not practicable to get an 
outfit together in the limited time at our disposal. 
The best we could do so late in the season was a hur- 
ried run up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cata- 
ract, three hundred and fifty feet in height, descend- 
ing over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four miles 
above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of 
scenic shots here, but on a roll which — whether in the 
camera or the laboratory it was impossible to deter- 
mine — was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune 
attended a number of other shots he'^ made (through 
the courtesy of the Captain of the mail launch in run- 
ning near the cliffs) of waterfalls tumbling directly 
into the lake. There are many slips between the cup 
and the lip — the camera and the screen, I should say 
— in scenic movie work. 

We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for 
lunch on the sixth of November, and a couple of hours 
later were down at the Columbia ready to push off 
again. I had been unable to get in touch with Cap- 
tain McDermid by phone, but was confident that he 
would turn up in good time at Wenatchee. As there 
was nothing between that point and the mouth of the 
Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesi- 
tation in making the run without a "pilot." Launch- 
ing Imshallah below the old ferry-tower at two 
o'clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just 
above the river and rapids of that name, at five. The 
skiff rode higher with Captain Armstrong and his 
luggage out, her increased buoyancy compensating 
in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had. 




<»l4^i^ 



















•i^x^r* 




WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING 

AUTOS {above) 

HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS ibelow) 



CHELAN TO PASCO 289 

Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I con- 
tinued rowing from the forward thwart. All of the 
luggage was shifted well aft. The current was fairly- 
swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encoun- 
tered were not difficult to pass. Ribbon Cliff, two 
thousand feet high and streaked with strata of yellow, 
grey and black clays, was the most striking physical 
feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon's 
run. 

Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre, 
and, with the packing season at its height, was jammed 
to the roof with workers. Rooms at the hotel 
were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in 
the parlour, which room was also occupied by three 
drummers and two truck drivers. I had a shake- 
down on a canvased-in porch, on which were six beds 
and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good 
part of the night growling because their wages had 
just been cut to seven dollars a day, now that the rush 
was over. I would have been the more surprised that 
any one should complain about a wage like that had 
not a trio of farmettes — or rather packettes — at the 
big family dinner table been comparing notes of their 
takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde confessed to 
having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last 
week packing apples, while a brown-bloomered bru- 
nette had done a bit better than twelve. The third 
one — attenuated, stoop-shouldered and spectacled — 
was in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled 
her average down to ten-fifty — "hardly worth coming 
out from Spokane for," she sniffed. Roos tried to 
engage them in conversation, and started out auspi- 



290 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ciously with a descrij)tion of running Box Canyon. 
But the gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got 
for doing a thing hke that, and promptly their inter- 
est faded. And why should they have cared to waste 
time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week camera- 
man? But it was something even to have eaten pump- 
kin pie with the plutocracy. 

The swift -flowing Entiat River has dumped a good 
many thousand tons of boulders into the Columbia, 
and most of these have lodged to form a broad, shal- 
low bar a short distance below the mouth of the 
former. The Columbia hasn't been able quite to make 
up its mind the best way to go here, and so has hit on 
a sort of a compromise by using three or four channels. 
Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of 
dilemma when we came rolling along there on the 
morning of the seventh, but as a boat — if it is going 
to preserve its entity as such — cannot run down more 
than one channel at a time, Imshallah found the at- 
tempt at a compromise to which she was committed 
only ended in butting her head against a low gravel 
island. It was impossible to make the main middle 
channel from there, but we poled off without much 
difficulty and went bumping off down a shallow chan- 
nel to the extreme right. She kissed off a boulder once 
or twice before winning through to deeper water, but 
not hard enough to do her much harm. It was a dis- 
tinctly messy piece of work, though, and I was glad 
that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there to see 
their teachings put into practice. 

The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and 
after passing a commanding point on the right bank 



CHELAN TO PASCO 291 

we came suddenly upon the open valley of the Wen- 
atchee, the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in 
all the hundreds of miles from the source of the Co- 
lumbia. There are not over twenty to thirty square 
miles of land that is even comparatively level here, 
but to eyes which had been wont for two months to 
seek sky-line with a forty-jfive degree upward slant 
of gaze it was like coming out of an Andean pass 
upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina. Wenat- 
chee was in sight for several miles before we reached 
it, an impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and 
tall buildings. Over all floated a dark pall, such as 
one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, Essen or any 
other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the 
forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that 
bituminous blanket. As we drew nearer we discov- 
ered that what we had taken to be smoke was a 
mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of 
the apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic 
packettes were joy-riding. There were, it is true, 
more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double 
procession of cars that jammed the main street for a 
mile, but that was doubtless because the supply of the 
former had held out better. I can't believe that the 
consideration of price had anything to do with it. 

The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dming- 
room set thick with cots, but by admiring a haber- 
dashery drummer's line of neck-ties for an hour, I 
managed to get him to "will" me his room and bath 
when he departed that afternoon. Roos employed 
similar strategjT" with a jazz movie orchestra fiddler, 
but his train didn't pull out until four-thirty in the 



292 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

morning. A young reporter from the local paper 
called for an interview in the afternoon, and told us 
the story of the Douglas, the steamer which Cap- 
tain McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in 
trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along 
to write the story of the run through Rock Island 
Rapids, the first to be reached and the place which 
was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have 
to pass. When she had come out of that sinister gorge 
without mishap, he had them land him at the first 
convenient place in the quiet water below, from where 
he made his way to the railway and 'hurried back to 
Wenatchee with his story. That he had seen all the 
best of the excitement, he had no doubt. A quarter 
of an hour after Selig left her, the Douglas was a 
total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He 
didn't know just how it had happened, but said we 
would find what was left of her still where she had 
struck, 

Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and 
claims to be the largest apple-shipping point in the 
United States. It also has a daily paper which claims 
to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten 
thousand population. I can easily believe this is true. 
I have seen many papers in cities of fifty or a hun- 
dred thousand that were not to be compared with it 
for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on 
almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the 
main street of Wenatchee, and every one seems to 
have a bank account. I saw stacks of check-books 
by the cashiers' desks in restaurants and shops, and 



CHELAN TO PASCO 293 

in one of the ice cream parlours I saw a young pack- 
ette paying for her nut sundae with a check. 

No word came from Captain JNIcDermid during the 
day, and after endeavouring to reach him by phone all 
of the following forenoon, I reluctantly decided to 
push on without him. This was a good deal of a dis- 
appointment, not only because I felt that I was going 
to need his help mighty badly, but also because I was 
anxious to see more of him personally. A man who 
will take a steamer containing his wife and children 
down Rickey's Rapids of the Columbia isn't to be met 
with every day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of 
the "Farmer Who Would See the Sea" working his 
way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine 
was about the most valuable thing there was to lose 
in getting down there, it seemed up to me to do what 
I could. But for the first time since we pushed off 
to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my in-* 
fliatable "Gieve" life-preserver waistcoat, which I had 
worn in the North Sea during the war, and which I 
had brought along on the "off chance." Selig came 
down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure 
for the World, but declined an invitation for another 
run through Rock Island Rapids. 

There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning 
the Columbia half a mile below Wenatchee, which 
fine structure also appears to be used on occasion as 
a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity 
at the very moment we were about to pass under it 
between the two mid-stream piers did not become 
apparent until the swift current had carried us so 



294, DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

close that it was not safe to try to alter course either 
to left or right. There was nothing to do but run the 
gauntlet of the swervily swooping dust-tailed comets 
whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut of dis- 
card of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand 
people, all disdainful of "used" things. It would 
have been a rare chance to renew our outfit, only most 
of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at the 
end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely 
acceptable. "Low bridge!" I shouted to Roos, and 
swung hard onto my oars, yelling a lung-full at every 
stroke in the hope that the busy dmiTpers might stay 
their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain 
hope! My final frightened upward glance told me 
that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather 
than lessening. 

I put Imshallah into some mighty nasty looking 
rapids with a lot less apprehension than I drove her 
into that reeking second-hand barrage, that Niagara 
of things that people didn't want. Doubtless it was 
the fact that I wanted the stuff still less than they did 
that lent power to my arms and gave me a strength 
far transcending that of ordinary endeavour. Roos 
swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the 
water, just as a speeding hydroplane lifts at the top 
of its jump. This may have been so; but if it was, 
Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped 
shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head, 
like the wings of a newly hatched chicken. Anyhow, 
the little lady drove through safely, just as she always 
had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh 
and dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the 



CHELAN TO PASCO 295 

roughest of rapids, here she oozed out upon an oil- 
shcked stream with the "Mark of the Beast" on her 
fore and aft. I mean that Hterally. That accursed 
little "White Wings" that sat up aloft to take toll of 
the life of poor Jack, must have had some kind of a 
slaughter-house dumping contract — and ImsJial- 
lah got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also 
a trailing length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As 
the latter burst when it kissed off my shoulder, Roos' 
joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes was not 
entirely without point. The only article of value ac- 
cruing was the shaving-brush which fell in Roos' lap. 
He felt sure it must have been thrown away by mis- 
take, for it had real camel's-hair bristles, and he liked 
it better than his own — after the ashes had worked out 
of it. And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only 
heard the splash of the wash-boiler that must have hit 
just ahead of her, but the sewing machine that grazed 
her stern jazzed right across my line of vision. 

Up to tbat time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend 
of Canada had stood as the superlative in the way of a 
really nasty hole to go through; from then on "Sur- 
prise Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge" claimed pride of 
place in this respect. 

Swabbing down decks as best we could without 
landing, we pushed ahead. I was anxious to get down 
to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the chan- 
nels, if not to start through, before dark. We should 
have known better than to treat a dainty lady like 
Imshallali in that way. It was bad enough to have 
subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage 
barrage ; not to give her a proper bath after it was un- 



296 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

pardonable. At least that was the way she seemed 
to look at it, and so I never felt inclined to blame her 
for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing 
through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge 
washed the outside of her bright and clean as ever, 
but it was the stain of that slaughter-house stuff on 
the inside that rankled. She was restive and cranky 
in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of 
slack water running between black basalt islands, and 
as the river narrowed and began to tumble over a 
boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway 
bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a 
spirited horse watching his chance for a bolt. 

It was Roos' business, of course, to watch where 
she was going, but he made no claim of being a quali- 
fied steersman ; so that there was really no excuse for 
my failing to watch our capricious lady's symptoms 
and keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I should 
have done so had not a freight train run out on the 
bridge just as we neared the head of the rapid, throw- 
ing out so striking a smoke-smudge against a back- 
ground of sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try 
for a hurried snapshot. That done, we were close to 
the "V" of the drop-off, and I had just time to see 
that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers 
tumbling right in the heart of the riffle, evidently 
thrown up by a jagged outcrop of bed-rock very close 
to the surface. I would never have chanced putting 
even a big hatteau directly into so wild a welter, but, 
with fairly good water to the left, there was no need 
of our passing within ten feet of the centre of dis- 
turbance. The course was so plain that I do not re- 



CHELAN TO PASCO 297 

call even calling any warning to Roos as I sat down 
and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other 
was responsible for what followed, but I think the 
real truth of it was that Imshallah had made up her 
mind to have a bath without further delay, and 
couldn't have been stopped anyhow. 

I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were 
hit ; for it all came with the suddenness of a sand-bag- 
ging. Roos was stroking away confidently, and ap- 
peared to be singing, from the movement of his lips. 
The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at 
once his eyes became wild and he lashed out with a 
frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently intended to 
throw her head to the left. The next instant the 
crash came — sudden, shattering, savage. I remem- 
ber distinctly wondering why Roos' eyes were shifted 
apprehensively upward, like those of a man who fan- 
cies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. 
And I think I recall spray dashing two or three 
lengths astern of us, before the solid battering ram 
of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. 
And all Imshallah did was to stand straight up on 
her hind legs and let little demi-semi-quivers run up 
and down her back like a real lady exulting in the 
tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let 
the river run over her ; then reared up on her hind legs 
again. Twice or thrice she repeated that routine, 
when, apparently satisfied that her ablutions were 
complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the 
rapid sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, with- 
out much help from either oars or paddle. I have 
always thought Roos was particularly happy in his 



298 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

description of how it looked for'ard just after that 
first big wave hit us. "The top of that comber was 
ten feet above your head," he said, "and it came curv- 
ing over you just like the 'canopy' of a 'Jack-in-the- 
Pulpit.' " 

With Imshallah rather more than half full of 
water, and consequently not a lot more freeboard for 
the moment than a good thick plank, it was just as 
well that no more rapids appeared before we found a 
patch of bank flat enough to allow us to land and 
dump her. Fresh as a daisy inside apd out, she was 
as sweet and reasonable when we launched her again 
as any other lady of quality after she has had her 
own way. Not far below the bridge we tied up near 
the supply-pipe of a railway pumping station on the 
left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island 
Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an 
ominous growl, this appeared to be the proper place 
to stop and ask the way. 

The engineer of the pumping-station said that he 
knew very little about the big rapid, as he had only 
been on his present job for a week. He had only seen 
the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was 
dead certain no open boat ever launched could live 
to run the lower end of it. He said he thought the 
safest way would be to put the skiff on his push-car, 
run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch 
it below the worst of the rapids. I told him we might 
be very glad to do this as a last resort, but, as it would 
involve a lot of time and labour, I would like to look 
at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his 
bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and sug- 



CHELAN TO PASCO 299 

gested we call in at a farm house a couple of hundred 
yards down the track and talk with an old man there, 
who would probably know all about the rapid. 

That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned 
out to be an old-time stern-wheeler captain, who had 
navigated the upper Columbia for many years in the 
early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, 
and said that we ought to have no great trouble with 
the rapids ahead, that is, as long as we didn't try to 
take undue liberties with them. The safest way to 
get through would be to land at the head of the big 
island that divided the channels and line right down 
the left side of it. It would be pretty hard work, but 
we ought not to get in wrong if we took our time. He 
was sorry he couldn't go down and look the place 
over with us, but it happened that his youngest daugh- 
ter was being married that evening, and things were 
sort of crowding for the rest of the day. That ex- 
plained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the nu- 
merous dressed-up men lounging around the porches. 
We decided that the groom was the lad, with an ag- 
gressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made the 
butt of a joke every tune he sauntered up to a new 
group, and that the bride was the buxom miss having 
her chestnut hair combed at a window, with at least 
half a dozen other girls looking on. 

Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed 
to the following morning, and changed to an at fresco 
affair which he could shoot with good light. With a 
little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into 
his "continuity." Perhaps, for instance, the "Farmer- 
Who-Would-See-the-Sea" might start them off on 



300 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down 
river in his boat. That would lend "heart interest and 
..." I throttled that scheme in the bud before my 
impetuous companion could broach it to the princi- 
pals. I wasn't going to tempt the providence that had 
saved me whole from the wrath of Jock o' Winder- 
mere by taking a chance with any more "bride stuff." 
The black- walled gorge of Rock Island is one of 
the grimmest-looking holes on the Columbia, and of 
all hours of the day sunset, when the deep shadows 
are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the 
least cheery time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at 
Hell Gate, the river spilts upon a long, rocky island, 
the broader, shallower channel being to the right, and 
the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end 
of the right-hand channel was quiet and straight; in- 
deed, it was the one I would have been prompted to 
take had not the old river captain at the farm-house 
inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other 
would be easier. The former had been the course 
Symons had taken, and he mentioned that the lower 
end was very crooked and rocky. I decided, there- 
fore, to brave the difficulties that I could see some- 
thing of in advance rather than to blunder into those 
I knew not of. Although the left channel began to 
speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it to 
be sure that we could run at least the upper two- 
thirds of it without much risk, and that there was then 
a good eddy from which to land on the side next to 
the railroad. This was the head of the main fall — an 
extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in 
four hundred yards. Down that we would have to 



CHELAN TO PASCO 301 

line. I was quite in agreement with the pump-station 
man that no open boat would live in those wildly roll- 
ing waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained 
Roos from accepting an invitation to the wedding, and 
we turned in early for a good night's sleep at the 
pump-station bunk-house. 

The game old octogenarian had asked me especially 
to hail him from the river in the morning, so that he 
could go down and help us through the rapids. I 
should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I 
knew would be a mighty awkward operation, but had 
not the heart to disturb him when I saw there was no 
curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when we 
drifted by at eight o'clock. The roar of fast and furi- 
ous revelry had vied with the roar of the rapids pretty 
well all night, culminating with a crescendo leading up 
to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It didn't 
seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river 
all morning after lining up against that big barrel of 
"sweet cider" all night. . . . (No, I hadn't missed 
that little detail; that was one of the reasons I had 
kept Roos away) . So we drifted on down toward 
the big noise alone. The pump-man promised he 
would come down to help as soon as his tank was 
filled, but that wouldn't be for an hour or more. 

Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. 
The black water-scoured canyon with the foam- 
white river at the bottom of it is not over fifty feet 
deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is 
a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which 
rises a thousand feet or more of brown bluff. The 
eastern wall still cast its shadow on the river, but the 



302 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening 
light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge 
with a diffused golden glow that threw every rock and 
riffle into sharp relief. It was a dozen times better 
to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct light, 
and, knowing just what to expect for the next quar- 
ter-mile, I ran confidently into the head of the rapid. 
Early morning is the hour of confidence and optimism 
on the flowing road ; evening the hour of doubt, inde- 
cision and apprehension. 

A submerged rock at the entrance ^o the left chan- 
nel, which I had marked mentally from the high bank 
the night before as an obstacle to be avoided, proved 
rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos 
spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in 
shooting by. Then the abrupt black walls closed in, 
and we ran for three hundred yards in fast but not 
dangerous water. The current took us straight into 
the eddy I had picked for a landing place, and the 
skiff slid quietly into a gentle swirling loop of back- 
water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock interven- 
ing between that secure haven and the brink of the 
fall. So far all had gone exactly as planned. Now 
we were to see how it looked for lining. 

Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined 
round the projecting rock, an operation which proved 
unexpectedly simple once it was started right. At 
my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the 
eddy, and as a consequence she was brought back 
against the rock and given rather a stiff bump. The 
next time I launched her higher up, and paying out 
plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main 



CHELAN TO PASCO 303 

current and over the "intake" of the fall. It took 
brisk following up to keep the line from fouling, and 
after that was cleared I didn't have quite as much 
time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for 
the coming jerk. The result was Imshallah got such 
a way on in her hundred feet of run that, like a locoed 
broncho pulling up and galloping off with its picket- 
pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock 
and into the water below. To my great surprise, 
where I was expecting to go straight into the whirl- 
pool one usually finds behind a projecting rock, I 
landed in water that was both slack and comparatively 
shallow. Recovering quickly from my stumble, I 
braced against the easy current and checked the run- 
away with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the 
last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump 
and stumble over again, but the ten foot flop down 
onto the not very deeply submerged boulders was a 
bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art's sake. 

Now that it was too late to line back, I saw why it 
was the old captain had advised working down the 
side of the island. The left bank of the cascade 
(which latter was tumbling close beside me now), 
was all but sheer. Only here and there were there 
footings close to the water, so that the man with the 
line would have to make his way for the most part 
along the top of the rocky wall. He could get along 
all right, but there was no place where a man could 
follow the boat and keep it off with a pole. It might 
have been managed with a man poling-off from the 
boat itself, but I hardly felt like urging Roos to take 
the chance. It was out of the question trying to line 



304 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

back up the "intake" of the fall, but there was one 
loop-hole which looked worth exploring before risk- 
ing an almost certain mess-up in trying to work down 
the side of the cascade. 

I have mentioned that I had expected to find a 
whirlpool under the big jutting rock. The only rea- 
son there wasn't one was because what at high water 
must have been a very considerable back channel 
took out at this point and acted as a sort of safety- 
valve. There was still a stream a few inches deep 
flowing out here, running off to the left into a dark 
cavernous-looking crack in the bedrock. That water 
had to come back to the river somewhere below, and 
there was just a chance that the boat could be squeezed 
through the same way. At any rate, there was not 
enough of a weight of water to do any harm, and it 
ought not to be hard to "back up" in the event it 
proved impossible to push on through. Leaving 
Roos to set up and shoot a particularly villainous 
whirlpool he had discovered, I dragged the skiff 
through the shallow opening and launched it into a 
deep black pool beyond. 

Poling from pool to pool, I entered a miniature 
gorge where I was presently so walled in by the rock 
that the raw roar of the cascade w^as muffled to a 
heavy, earth-shaking rumble. This tiny canyonette 
opened up at the end of a hundred yards to a sheer- 
walled rock-bound pool, evidently scoured out by the 
action of a high-water whirlpool. This turned out 
to be an enormous "pot-hole," for I had to avoid the 
water-spun boulder, which had been the tool of the 
sculpturing River God, in pushing into the outlet 



CHELAN TO PASCO 305 

crack. The latter was so narrow and over-hanging 
that I had to lie down and work the skiff along with 
my up-raised hands. Twenty yards of that brought 
me out to a winding little lake, less steeply walled 
than the gorge above, but apparently closed all the 
way round, even at the lower end. I was in a com- 
plete cid de sac. A gurgling whirlpool showed where 
the water escaped by a subterranean passage, but that 
was plainly no place to take a lady, especially a lady 
of quality like Imshallak. 

Tying Imshallah up to a boulder to prevent her 
amiable weakness for rushing to the embraces of 
whirlpools getting the better of her, I climbed up a 
steeply-sloping pitch of bedrock and looked down to 
the head of a long narrow arm of quiet water. The 
gay little waterfall breaking forth from the rock be- 
neath my feet was leaping directly into the main 
stream of the Colmiibia — and below the cascade. A 
stiff thirty or forty-foot portage, and we were 
through. We might have to wait for the pump-man 
to help us lift the boat up that first pitch, but he 
ought to be along almost any time now. 

Taking a short-cut back across the water-washed 
rock, I found Roos just completing his shots of the 
cascade. The sun was on the latter now, and its daz- 
zling whiteness threw it into striking relief against 
the sinister walls between which it tumbled. Save the 
first two falls of Surprise Rapids, there is not a sav- 
ager rush of water on the upper Columbia than this 
final three hundred yards of tiie left-hand channel of 
Rock Island. Roos was delighted with the way it 
showed up in his finder, and even more pleased when 



306 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

he learned that we were not going to have to line the 
boat down it. Then he had one of his confounded 
inspirations. That portage over the reef of bedrock, 
with the little waterfall in the background, would 
photograph hke a million dollars, he declared ; but to 
get the full effect of it, and to preserve "continuity," 
the "farmer" ought to do it alone. It wouldn't do to 
include the pump-man in the picture, now that the 
"farmer" was supposed to be travelling alone. If I 
had to have his help, all right ; only it wouldn't do to 
shoot while the other man was in the picture. But it 
would really be the "Cat's ears" if the "farmer" could 
make it on his own. He wouldn't have to make 
that big pull-up without stopping; he could jerk 
the boat along a foot or two at a time, and then get 
his breath like the pursued villain did in the pro- 
cessional finales of knockabout comedies. Then he 
showed me how, by resuming the same grip on the 
boat and the same facial expression at each renewed 
attack, the action could be made to appear practically 
continuous. 

Well, I fell for it. Tom Sawyer was not more 
adroit in getting out of white-washing his fence than 
was Roos in getting out of that portage job. He 
wanted to preserve "continuity" by starting back at 
the head of the cascade, but we compromised by mak- 
ing it the "pot-hole." Emerging to the lakelet, I 
registered "extreme dejection" at finding my progress 
blocked, and "dull gloom" as I landed and climbed 
up for a look-see. But when I reached the top of the 
reef and discovered the quiet water below, like sun- 
light breaking through a cloud, I assumed as nearly as 



CHELAN TO PASCO 307 

I knew how an exact imitation of an expression I had 
seen on the face of Balboa in a picture called "First 
Sight of the Pacific." "That's the 'Cat's ears,' " en- 
couraged Roos; "now snake the boat over — and make 
it snappy!" 

I made it snappy, all right; but it was my spine 
that did most of the snapping. And it wasn't a foot 
at a time that I snaked the boat over. (Roos had 
been too optimistic on that score) ; it was by inches. 
Roos took infinite pains in coaching me as to "resum- 
ing grip and expression;" but even so, I am afraid the 
finished film will display considerable jerkiness in 
its "continuous action." I gained some solace by call- 
ing Roos names all the time, and so must again beg 
"lip-readers" yA\o see the picture to consider the prov- 
ocation and not judge too harshly. Once tilted over 
the crest of the reef, the boat took more holding than 
hauling. Being pretty well gone in the back and 
knees, she got away from me and slid the last ten 
feet, giving her bottom a bumping that it never did 
entirely recover from. I was caulking incipient leaks 
all the way to Portland as a consequence of that con- 
founded "one man" portage. 

Just as we had loaded up and were ready to push 
off, the pump-man breezed along and asked us to 
give him a passage as far as Columbia River station, 
two or three miles below. He wanted to take an oar, 
but as the distance was short and the current swift, I 
told him it was not worth bothering with. So he laid 
the oar he had taken out along the starboard gun- 
wale, and knelt just aft the after thwart, facing for- 
ward. Roos always claimed that it was the loom of 



308 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the pump-man's back cutting off his view ahead that 
was responsible for the little diversion that followed. 
A gcod part of the blame was doubtless my own for 
not keeping a sharper watch over my shoulder, as I 
certainly should have done had I been alone. In any 
event, Imshallalis alibi was complete. She behaved 
through it all like a real thoroughbred. 

There was a sinuous tangle of swirls where the 
right-hand and left-hand cascades flew at each other's 
throats at the lower end of the rock island, and then a 
gay stretch of sun-dazzled froth where the teeth of a 
long reef menaced all the way across the channel; 
then a stretch of lazily-coiling green-black water, 
flowing between lofty brown cliffs and broken here 
and there with the loom of house-like rocks of shat- 
tered basalt. The roar of Rock Island died down in 
muffled diminuendo, and it seemed mighty good to 
have that diapason muttering in bafflement astern 
rather than growling in anticipation ahead. There 
was only one little rapid between here and the siding, 
the pump-man said, and it wouldn't bother us much as 
there was plenty of room to get by. He was right — 
for the most part. 

I took a good look at the riffle as we headed down 
to it. It was a short stretch of rough, noisy water, 
but nothing that would have had to be avoided except 
for a single big roller in the middle of it. As this was 
throwing a great dash of spray high in the air every 
now and then, I felt sure the rock responsible for it 
was very slightly submerged — perhaps not more than 
a few inches. As this was so obviously an obstacle to 
steer well clear of, it never occurred to me to give 



CHELAN TO PASCO 309 

Roos any especial warning about it, especially as he 
continued standing and sizing up the situation for half 
a minute after I had resumed my oars. The main 
current ran straight across the riffle, but with fifty 
feet of clear water to the left there was no need of 
getting into any of the worst of it, let alone trying to 
hurdle that foam-throwing rock. 

Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way 
on the skiff by the time she dipped over into the fast- 
running water. Roos was cuffing jauntily at the 
wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I 
remember particularly it was "Dardanella" that was 
claiming his attention. Two or three times he had 
maintained that he was a "lucky fella" before I saw 
what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and pertur- 
bation gathering in the pump-man's steel-grey eyes. 
Then, all of a sudden, he gave vocal expression to his 
doubts. "You won't think you're a 'lucky fella' if 
you put her onta that rock," he yelled over his shoul- 
der. Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that 
big spray-flipping comber about two lengths away, 
and dead ahead, looking savager than ever. Trailing 
my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could bring to 
bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward 
the better water. The next instant I was all but fall- 
ing over backwards as the oar snapped cleanly off in 
the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the long 
copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh 
fracture of the broken spruce. 

The weight I put onto my right oar in saving my- 
self from tumbling backward had the effect of throw- 
ing her head in just the opposite direction I had in- 



310 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

tended. Since she could hardly have avoided hitting 
the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is 
probably better that she hit it squarely than sidling. 
The crash was solid, almost shattering in its intensity, 
and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If 
she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not pos- 
sibly have survived anything heavier. 

The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept 
his head perfectly in the face of the deluge that had 
engulfed him. The spare oar was lying ready to 
hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by 
the time I was on an even keel again. The second 
wave, which she rode on her own, threw ImsliallaJi s 
head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to the 
third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing 
how well she was taking it, I did not try to pull out 
of the riffle now, but let her run right down through 
it to the end. Only the first wave put much green 
water into her, but even that had not filled her any- 
where nearly so deep as she had been the evening 
before. When we beached her below Columbia River 
station we found her starboard bow heavily dented, 
but even that did not convince me that we had hit the 
big rock. I am rather inclined to think that denting 
was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock 
Island. I was dead sorry I couldn't persuade that 
pump-man to throw up his job and come along with 
us. He had the real stuff in him. 

After having lunch in the railway men's eating 
house at Columbia River, we went down to push off 
again. Finding the local ferry-man examining the 
skiff, I asked him if he thought she would do to run 





THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (above) 
THE WRECK OF THE "EOUCLAS" ( below) 





z ^ 

^£« 

o t. - 

o < 
^ a 



CHELAN TO PASCO 311 

Cabinet Rapids, which we could hear rumbling a mile 
below. "Not if you try to push them out of the river 
the way you did that riffle above here a while ago," 
he replied with a grin. He said he had been watching 
us through his glass, and that the boat had disap- 
peared from sight for three or four seconds when she 
hit the big roller. He offered to bet his ferry-boat 
against the skiff that we couldn't do it again and 
come through right-side-up. No takers. Speaking 
seriously, he said that, by keeping well to the left, we 
could run Cabinet all right — if nothing went wrong. 
"But better not make a practice of breaking an oar 
just where you're going to need it most," he added 
with another grin; "there's nothing on the river that 
would live through the big riffle over against the right 
bank. You'll see what she did to the Douglas/' 

Landing from the slack water above a rocky point 
which juts out into the river at the head of Cabinet 
Rapids, we climbed a couple of hundred yards over 
water-scoured boulders to the brink of the gorge. It 
was a decidedly rough-looking rapid, but by no means 
so hopeless for running with a small boat as Rock 
Island. In that the main riffle was thrown against a 
sheer bank of the river, it reminded me a good deal 
of Death Rapids on the Big Bend. But this riffle, 
while appearing fully as rough as that of the dreaded 
Dalhs des Morts, was not, like the latter, unavoidable. 
The chance of passing it in only fairly broken water 
to the left looked quite good enough to try. The 
wreck of the Douglas, standing out white and stark 
against the black boulders a mile below, was a good 
warning against taking any unnecessary chances. I 



312 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

looked well to the oars and the trim of the boat before 
shoving off. 

Once out into the river, I could see that the rapid 
was white from bank to bank, but still nothing that 
ought to trouble us seriously. I stood for a minute 
or two looking ahead from the vantage of one of the 
thwarts, and it was just as I was taking up my oars 
again in the quickening current that the corner of my 
eye glimpsed the narrow opening of a deep back- 
channel winding off between splintered walls of co- 
lumnar basalt to the left. I wasn't ^looking for any 
more one-man portages, but this opening looked good 
enough to explore. It might lead through by an easy 
way, and there was hardly enough water to do much 
harm if it didn't. It took hard pulling to sheer off 
from the "intake" now we had drifted so close, but 
we finally made it and entered the dark back-channel. 
Narrowing and broadening, just as the other had 
done, it led on for a couple of hundred yards, finally 
to discharge over a six-foot fall into a deeply indented 
pool that opened out to the river about half way down 
the rapid. The wedge-shaped crack at the head of the 
little fall was narrower than the skiff at water-line, 
but by dint of a little lifting and tugging we worked 
her through and lowered her into the pool below. 
Pulling out through the opening, we headed her con- 
fidently into the current. There was a quarter-mile 
of white water yet, but we were far enough down now 
so that the loss of an oar or any other mishap wouldn't 
leave the skiff to run into those wallowing rollers over 
against the further cliff. A sharp, slashing run car- 
ried us through to the foot of Cabinet Rapids, and a 



CHELAN TO PASCO 313 

few minutes later we had hauled up into an eddy 
under the left bank opposite the wreck of the 
Douglas. 

The little stern-wheeler had come to grief at high- 
water, so that we had to clamber all of three hundred 
yards over big, smooth, round boulders to reach the 
point where the wreck was lying. The latter was by 
no means in so bad a shape as I had expected to find it. 
The principal damage appeared to have been done to 
the wheel, which was clamped down tight over a huge 
boulder, and to the starboard bow, which was stove in. 
The rest of her hull and her upper works were intact; 
also the engines, though terribly rusty. There was 
not much from which one could reconstruct the story 
of the disaster ; in fact, I have not learned to this day 
any authentic details. The chances are, however, that 
the wheel struck a rock somewhere in Cabinet Rapids, 
and, after that, drifting out of control, she had come 
in for the rest of the mauling. If her captain is like 
the rest of the Columbia River skippers I met, I have 
no doubt that she will be patched up again before 
next high-water and started off for Portland. 

With towering cliffs on both sides and the great 
black boulders scattered all around, Roos felt that 
both subject and setting were highly favourable for 
an effective movie, and started to think out a way to 
work the wreck of the Douglas into his "continuity." 
After some minutes of brown study, he declared that 
the best way to work it would be for the "farmer" to 
land, come clambering across the boulders registering 
"puzzled wonderment," and then to stand in silent 
contemplation of the wreck, registering "thankful^ 



314 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ness." "Thankfulness for wheat?" I demanded; "it 
doesn't strike me as Christian to gloat over the wreck 
of a ship." "You don't get me at all," he expostu- 
lated. "I don't mean for him to show thankfulness 
because of the wreck of the steamer, but because his 
own boat has so far escaped a similar fate. He just 
stands here with his arms folded, casts his eyes up- 
ward, moves his lips as if . . ." 

"Nothing doing," I cut in decisively. "If you'd 
been raising beans and hay and apricots as long as I 
have, you'd know that a farmer never Registers thank- 
fulness about anything but a rise in the market, and 
there ain't no such thing any more." While we were 
arguing that moot point, the sun dipped behind the 
loftily looming wall of brown-black cliff across the 
river and the trouble settled itself automatically. 
Because there was no longer light, Roos thought it 
would be a good stunt to camp where we were until 
morning, and as a camp was always "continuity" — 
there we were ! 

There was plenty of cordwood left, and the galley 
stove was in good condition. As we had no candles, 
dinner was cooked by the mingled red and green 
gleams of the port and starboard lights, transferred to 
the galley for that purpose. I slept in the cook's 
cabin and Roos — with his bed made up on the wire 
springs from the Captain's cabin — on the deck of the 
galley. With water freezing half an inch thick in the 
coffee-pot on the galley stove, we had an insufferably 
cold night of it — one of the worst we spent on the river. 
In the morning Roos made his "camp shots," which 
consisted principally of the farmer chopping cord-. 



CHELAN TO PASCO 315 

wood on the main deck, building a fire in the galley 
stove and cooking breakfast. Out of deference to 
my esoteric knowledge of the way farmers feel about 
things, he consented to omit the "thankfulness stuff." 

Shoving off into a steady six-mile current at nine- 
thirty, a few minutes brought us in sight of a striking 
basaltic island, which Symons had characterized as 
"one of the most perfect profile rocks in existence." 
"Approaching it from the north," he wrote, "it pre- 
sents a striking likeness to the profile of Queen Vic- 
toria. . . . Coming nearer to it and passing it on the 
west, the profile changes and merges into a more 
Grecian and Sphinx-like face, whose placid immo- 
bility takes one's mind involuntarily to far-off Egypt. 
It rises from the surface of the water about a hundred 
feet, and a pair of eagles have selected it as their home, 
and upon its extreme top have built a nest, giving, as 
it were, a crown to this goddes of the Columbia." 

Roos declared himself strong for that "Sphinx 
stuff," and had his camera set up in the bow ready 
for a close-up of every change of expression. He was 
doomed to disappointment. The first thing we dis- 
covered missing was the crowning eagles' nest, and 
then Victoria's nose, mouth and chin. Her brow and 
hair were there, but both considerably eroded and 
inroad-ed by the weather. The "Grecian-and- 
Sphinx-like face" we never did locate, although I 
pulled around the island twice in search of them. 
Roos declared her an "oil can," and packed up his 
camera in supreme disgust. That was, I believe, the 
last time he had it set up on the Columbia. 

As Lieutenant Symons had proved so invariably 



816 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

accurate in all of his topographical descriptions, I am 
strongly inclined to the belief that floods and the 
elements had conspired to wreak much havoc with 
"Victoria's" features in the forty years that had 
elapsed since he limned them so strikingly with pen 
and pencil. I have known fairly stonily-featured 
ladies to change almost as much in a good deal less 
than forty years. 

Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat 
irregular series of columnar basaltic cliffs which wall 
in the Columbia closely for the next thirty miles. 
They range in height from fifteen hundred to three 
thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saf- 
fron-cinnamon, through all the shades of brown, to a 
dull black. The prevailing formation is that of up- 
ended cordwood, but there are endless weird stratifi- 
cations and lamiations, with here and there queer 
nuclei that suggest sulphur crystallizations. Im- 
bedded in the face of one of these cliffs not far from 
the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a land- 
mark that has been famous among Columbia voy- 
ageurs for over a hundred years. This is huge log, 
barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end in 
the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the 
river and almost an equal distance from the brink of 
the sheer wall of rock, there is no possible question of 
its having been set there by man. The descriptions 
written of it a hundred years ago might have been 
written to-day. Whether it is petrified or not, there 
is no way of knowing. The only possible explanation 
of its presence is that it was lodged where it is at a 
time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet 



CHELAN TO PASCO 317 

higher than it does to-day, probably before it tore its 
great gorge through the Cascades and much of what 
is now eastern Washington was a vast lake. 

On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we 
avoided the upper half of Gualquil Rapids by taking 
a straight, narrow channel to the right, which would 
probably have been dry in another week. There is a 
half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some 
heavy swirls against a sheer cliff, but nothing seri- 
ously to menace any well-handled open boat. The 
water was slack for a number of miles from the foot 
of Gualquil, but began quickening where the river 
spread out between long gravel bars below Vantage 
Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the latter 
point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly 
round our boat, making strange "high signs" and 
voicing cryptic utterances, evidently having some- 
thing to do with a local bootleggers' code. At our 
failure to respond in kind, they became suspicious 
(doubtless the fact that Roos was wearing a second- 
hand Canadian officer's uniform he had bought in 
Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were 
prohibition enforcement officials, and they were mut- 
tering darkly to each other and shaking their heads 
as we pushed off again. 

The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage 
Ferry, and as we neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and 
St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough patches of sandy 
desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of 
the shelter of the high river walls, we were at once ex- 
posed to a heavA^ easterly wind that had evidently 
been blowing all day on the desert. The sun dulled 



318 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled 
air, and the wind, which headed us every now and 
then, about neutralized the impulse of the accelerat- 
ing current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour sand- 
storm blowing when we beached the boat under the 
railway bridge at four-thirty. The brilliantly gol- 
den-yellow cars of the C. ^I. & St. P. Limited rum- 
bling across above behind their electric locomotive 
seemed strangely out-of-place in the desolate land- 
scape. 

The one sidewalk of the town's fragment of street 
was ankle-deep in sand as we buffetted our way to 
the hotel. "Have you ever been in Beverly before?" 
asked the sandy -haired (literally) girl who responded 
to the jangle of the cowbell on the counter. "But 
I should know better than that," she apologized with 
a blushas she blew off the grit on the register; " 'cause 
if you had been here once, you'd sure never be here 
again. What's the game, anyhow? You haven't 
. . .?" A knowing twitch of a dusty eyelash finished 
the question. 

"No, we haven't," growled Roos irritably. Some- 
how he was never able to extract half the amusement 
that I did over being taken for a boot-legger. 

It was the sand-storm that broke Boos' heart, I 
think. He was non-committal at supper that night 
when I started to talk about Priest Rapids, and the 
next morning, after describing his shave as like rub- 
bing his face with a brick, he announced that he was 
through with the Columbia for good. As there was a 
good deal to be said for his contention that, between 
the shortening days and the high cliffs walHng in the 



CHELAN TO PASCO 319 

river, there were only two or three hours of good 
shooting light even when the sun was out, I did not 
feel justified in urging him to go on unless he wanted 
to. In any event, light for filming the running and 
lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was 
at its height, was out of the question for a day or two 
at least. And below Priest Rapids there would be 
nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake 
was passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should 
go on to Pasco by train and await me there, finding 
out in the meantime by wire whether Chester cared 
to have him continue the "farmer" picture in the face 
of the adverse light conditions. 

By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest 
Rapids. These, beginning at the end of a stretch of 
slack water several miles below Beverty, continue for 
eleven miles. In this distance there are seven major 
riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water 
between. It seemed probable that all of these, with 
the exception of the second and seventh, and possibly 
the sixth, could be run. The lining of the others, 
while not difficult, would require the help of another 
man. All that morning I inhaled sand as I went 
over Beverly with a fine-toothed comb in a very 
earnest effort to find some one willing to give me a 
hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to 
success was an ex-brakeman, who said he would go 
with me after the storm was over, provided a job 
hadn't turned up in the meantime. The only real 
river-man I found was an old chap who opined that 
the middle of November was too late in the year to 
be getting his feet — if nothing else — wet in the "Co- 



320 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

lumby." He offered to haul the boat to the foot of 
the rapids by the road for twenty dollars, but as the 
down-river branch of the Milwaukee presented an op- 
portunity to accomplish the same end in less time and 
discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As 
there was an auto-stage service from Hanford to 
Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the former point by 
train, and helped get the boat down to the river and 
into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the 
point on the line closest to the foot of Priest Rapids, 
but I took the boat through to there^because the sta- 
tion was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and 
launching, therefore, a simpler matter. 

The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of 
Priest Rapids and the mouth of the Snake has the 
slowest current of any part of the Columbia above the 
Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by 
stops for lunch, I now began putting into practice a 
plan which I followed right on to the end of my voy- 
age. Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of 
bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river 
right staight on through to my destination. Munch- 
ing and resting for an hour at noon, I at least had the 
benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much 
lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer 
being troubled with that comfortable siesta-time 
drowsiness that inevitably follows a hearty meal and 
disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour 
or more. 

For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river, 
flanked on either side by rolling desert sand-dunes, 
winds in broad shallow reaches through a region des- 



CHELAN TO PASCO 321 

olate In the extreme. The only signs of life I saw for 
many miles were co3'otes slinking through the hungry 
sage-brush and occasional flocks of geese, the latter 
forerunners of the countless myriads that were to keep 
me company below the Snake. At Richfield the re- 
sults of irrigation became evident in young apple 
orchards and green fields of alfalfa, and these multi- 
plied all the' way down to Pasco. The country seemed 
very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among 
cliffs and mountains, but there was no question of its 
richness and productivity once water was brought to 
it. The low overflow flats about the mouth of the 
Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west 
a few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the 
beauty of the famous apple country which owes so 
much to the waters diverted from that little river. 

After pulling for an hour with the long Northern 
Pacific bridge in view, I landed just below the Pasco- 
Kennewick ferry at three o'clock. As I was beaching 
the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the 
ferry-man's house-boat, a hail from the river attracted 
my attention. It was from Roos, in the front seat of 
an auto, on the approaching ferry-boat. His stage 
had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a 
consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing 
by ten minutes. After the speed with which we had 
moved on the upper river, however, mine had been 
rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it 
had taken me just under six hours to do the thirty- 
five miles. 

After the exchange of a wire or two, Roos obtained 
permission from Chester to suspend the "farmer" 



322 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

picture, and was ordered on to New York to report. 
We were both a good deal disappointed not to have a 
pictorial record of the "farmer" actually seeing the 
sea; in fact, we did some hours of "location" scouting 
in the hope of finding a substitute Pacific in the 
vicinity of Pasco. If that Beverly sand-storm had 
only made itself felt seventy-five miles farther down 
river I honestly believe we would have accomplished 
our worthy end. There was a pretty bit of white 
beach below the N. P. bridge. If the sand had been 
blowing thick enough to obscure the farther shore, 
and if the wind had blown in the right direction to 
throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood 
with one foot on that beach, the other on l7nshallalis 
bow, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and registered "ful- 
filment," and none could have told it from the real 
Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco's 
outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have 
postulated, would have "shot" more like the Pacific 
than many spots I can think of looking off to the 
Columbia bar. 



CHAPTER XIII 

PASCO TO THE DALLES 

The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken 
previous to the one on which I was about to embark 
was down the lower Colorado River, from Needles to 
the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in 
comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing 
much to look out for save the tidal bore at the lower 
end. As I had never been above the Dalles on the 
lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would 
encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there 
were locks by which the Dalles and Cascades could 
be passed, but as the combined fall at these points 
accounted for only about a quarter of that between the 
Snake and tide-water, it was certain there must still 
be some very swift rapids to run. That there had at 
times been a steamer service maintained from the 
Snake down meant that there must be some sort of a 
rock-free channel through all of the riffles ; but it did 
not necessarily mean that these were runnable in a 
small boat. A properly handled stern-wheeler can 
be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan) 
hauled up rapids where not even a high-powered 
launch can live. I had a list of about a score of the 
principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls, 
with their distances from the Canadian Boundarj^ 
by river. This would enable me to know approxi- 
mately where I was going to find them. That was all. 

323 



324 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Information on fall, channel and the best means of 
running them I would have to pick up as I went along. 

I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o'clock in 
the morning of Sunday, November fourteenth. With 
Roos and his blanket-roll, camera and tripod out of 
the stern, I found that the skiff trimmed better when 
I rowed from the after thwart. She pulled easier and 
handled a lot more smartly now. It was evident, 
however, that her increased freeboard was going to 
make her harder to hold to her course with head winds, 
but these I hoped to have little trouble with until I 
reached the gorge of the Cascades. The ferry-man 
assured me that I would encounter no really bad 
water until I came to the last pitch of Umatilla 
Rapids, about thirty-five miles below. He advised 
me to take a good look at that before putting into it, 
as an unbroken reef ran almost directly across the 
current and the channel was not easy to locate. It 
was the most troublesome bar to navigation on the 
lower Colmnbia, and steamers were repeatedly get- 
ting in trouble there. I would see the latest wreck a 
couple of miles below the foot of the rapids. 

I passed the mouth of the Snake about three miles 
below the ferry. Here was no such spectacular meet- 
ing of waters as occurs when the Pend d'Oreille and 
Columbia spring together, for the country is low and 
level, and the mouth of the Snake broad and shallow. 
The discharge was through two channels, and the 
water greenish-grey in colour; but where that blend 
in the swift tributaries of the upper river suggests the 
intense coldness of glacial origin, here the picture 
conjured up was of desert and alkali plains. Its 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 325 

mouth is the least interesting part of the Snake. It 
has some magnificent canyons in its upper and middle 
waters — as have also its two fine tributaries, the Sal- 
mon and Clearwater, — and its Shoshone Falls are 
second only to Niagara on the North American conti- 
nent. 

Lieutenant Symons, who concluded his exploration 
of the upper Columbia at the Snake, characterizes the 
region as a "bleak, dreary waste, in which for many 
miles around sage-brush and sand predominate . . . 
one of the most abominable places in the country to 
live in." Alexander Ross, on the other hand, writing 
seventy years earlier, describes it as one of the loveliest 
lands imaginable. The fact that the one reached 
the Snake in the fall and the other in the spring may 
have had something to do with these diametrically 
opposed impressions. Irrigation and cultivation have 
gone far to redeem this land from the desert Symons 
found it, but it is still far from being quite the Para- 
dise Ross seemed to think it was. As the only con- 
siderable plain touching the Columbia at any point in 
its course, this region of the Snake can never make the 
scenic appeal of the hundreds of miles of cliff -walled 
gorges above and below ; but it is a land of great po- 
tential richness. With water and power available 
from the two greatest rivers of the West, there can be 
no question of its future, both agriculturally and in- 
dustrially. Pasco will yet more than fulfil the prom- 
ises made for that mushroom town in its early boom 
days. "KEEP YOUR EYE ON PASCO!" was 
a byword from one end of the country to the other in 
the nineties, and this hustling rail and agricultural 



326 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

centre at the junction of the Columbia and the Snake 
should not be lost sight of even to-day. 

The lighter-hued water of the Snake was pretty 
well churned into the flood of the Columbia at the end 
of a mile, leaving a faint suggestion of cloudiness in 
the transparent green that the latter had preserved 
all the way from the Arrow Lakes. The long bridge 
of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway 
spanned the Columbia just below the Snake, and 
from there on paralleled the river closely right down 
to the Willamette. After the Oregon-Washington 
Railway and Navigation Company tracks appeared 
on the south bank below the Walla Walla, it was only 
at rare intervals that I was out of sight of a grade, or 
out of sound of a train, for the remainder of my voy- 
age. In a day or two the trainmen, running back and 
forth between divisional points, came to recognize 
the bright green skiff plugging on down the dark 
green river (mighty small she must have looked to 
them from the banks) and never failed to give her a 
hail or a wave in passing. On a certain memorable 
occasion one of them (doubtless in direct defiance of 
rules) ventured even further in the way of a warning 
. . . but I will tell of that in its place. 

Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry, 
are formed by a rough reef of bedrock running half 
way across the river from the right bank. Approached 
from the right side of the long gravel island that di- 
vides the river just above them, one might get badly 
tangled up before he got through; by the left-hand 
channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye on the 
shallowing water at the bars. A sky-line of brown 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 327 

mountains, with a double-turreted butte as their most 
conspicuous feature, marks the point where the Co- 
lumbia finally turns west for its assault on the Cas- 
cades and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the 
boundary of the fertile plains extending from the 
Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the beginning of a 
new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of 
all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges 
is a fitting finale to the stupendous scenic pageant 
that has been staged all the way from the glacial 
sources of the Columbia. 

A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the 
rather insignificant Walla Walla comes pretty near 
to being the most historically important point on the 
Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the 
waters of the long-struggled-toward Oregon; here 
came Fremont, the "Pathfinder;" here Thompson 
planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the 
valley of the Columbia for the Northwest Company ; 
and by here, sooner or later, passed and repassed 
practically every one of the trappers, missionaries, 
settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring 
Oregon permanently under the Stars and Stripes. 

The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark 
for voyageurs for a hundred years, has long been 
called "The Two Virgins." The story is told locally 
of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking ref- 
uge in a cave between the castellated turrets during 
an Indian massacre, but who got in rather serious 
trouble with the Church afterwards as a consequence 
of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Ca- 
nadian half-breed voyageur. The latter got the 



328 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

salient details of the story straight, but neglected to 
explain that the two virgins were mountains. The 
result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed 
excommunication for saving his life at the expense of 
breaking his vows. I got no affidavit with the story; 
but local "stock" yarns are always worth preserving 
on account of their colour. 

There were a number of big black rocks where the 
river began its bend to the west, but the channel to the 
right was not hard to follow. Neither did Bull Run 
Rapids, a few miles farther down, qffer any difficul- 
ties. I followed the steamer channel as having the 
swiftest current, but could have passed without 
trouble on either side of it in much quieter water. 
Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and 
higher to left and right, encroaching closely on the 
river. There was little room for cultivation at any 
point, and often the railways had had to resort to 
heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through 
some jutting rock buttress. There were no trees, and 
the general aspect of the country was desolate in the 
extreme. 

It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I 
headed Imshallah into the first pitch of Umatilla 
Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly thick- 
ening mist about three o'clock, and from then on the 
whole landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself 
by taking on shade after shade of dull, inconspicuous 
grey. From the grey-white mistiness of the sky to 
the grey-green murkiness of the river there was noth- 
ing that contrasted with anything else; every object 
was blended, dissolved, all but quenched. The foam- 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 329 

ruffles above even the sharpest of the riffles blurred 
like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred 
feet, and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid 
the ones with teeth in them. Neither the first nor the 
second riffle had any very bad water, but my neck was 
stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they 
were. I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by 
drifting down anything that looked very threatening 
stern first, but that would have involved retrimming 
the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was 
going to make iUmatilla by dark, there was no time 
to lose. 

From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids 
to the head of the third or main one is a mile and a 
half. There was a slight up-river breeze blowing in 
the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came 
to my ears some distance above the opening riffle. 
The distant roar augmented steadily after that, and 
the sharper grind of the more imminent riffles was 
never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The 
fact that it had a certain "all pervasive" quality, seem- 
ing to fill the whole of the gorge with its heavy beat, 
told me that it was an unusually long rapid, as well as 
an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was about 
all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in 
sight on the left bank, which I was skirting, and the 
right bank was masked with mist. With none to seek 
information from, and with not enough light to see 
for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I 
could either land, line as far as I could while light 
lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot for the night, 
or I could take my chance at running through. It 



330 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

was the delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant 
upon lining that was the principal factor in deciding 
me to try the latter course. Also, I knew that there 
was an open channel all the way through, and that the 
rapid was a comparatively broad and shallow one, 
rather than constricted and deep. This meant that 
it would be straight white water — a succession of 
broken waves — I was going into, rather than heavy 
swirls and whirlpools; just the water in which the 
skiff had already proved she was at her best. These 
points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to 
a point where the chance of running was worth taking 
for the time and trouble it would save. If I had not 
known these things in advance, I should never, of 
course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under 
such conditions of light. 

I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward 
that Pasco ferry-man for those few words he dropped 
about the run of the reef and the set of the current at 
Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids 
I have ever known on any river where the main drift 
of the current will not carry a boat to the deepest 
channel. This is due to the fact that the great reef 
of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently 
submerged even at middle water to permit a consid- 
erable flow directly across it. The consequence of this 
is that a boat, large or small, which follows the current 
and does not start soon enough working over toward 
the point where a channel has been blasted through 
the reef, is almost certain to be carried directly upon 
the latter. This has happened to a good many steam- 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 331 

ers, the latest having been wrecked not long before 
my voyage. 

With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind, 
I had edged a good deal farther out across the current 
than would have been the case had I been trusting to 
my own judgment of the way the rapid ought to de- 
velop in the light of my past experience. The smooth 
but swiftly-flowing water to the left looked almost 
empty of threat, and it was not until I was within a 
hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing 
directly over the latter and went tumbling down the 
farther side in an almost straight fall. At the same 
instant I saw that I was still heading forty or fifty 
feet to the left of where the "intake" dipped through 
the break in the reef. Realizing that I could never 
make it by heading straight, I swung the skiff round 
and pulled quartering to the current with her head 
up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I 
like to think of. I missed the middle of the "V" by 
ten feet as I swung her head down-stream again, and 
as the racing current carried her up against the back- 
wave thrown off the end of the break in the reef she 
heeled heavily to starboard, like an auto turning on a 
steeply-banked track. Then she shot out into the 
big white combers in mid-channel and started slap- 
banging down through them. It looked beastly rough 
ahead, but in any event it was better than hanging up 
on the reef at the outset. We were going to have run 
for our money whatever happened. 

The only precautions there had been time to take 
were slipping into my "Gieve" and throwing all my 



332 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

luggage aft. Half-inflated, the rubber-lined jacket 
was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready 
to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim, 
it had been my snap judgment at the last moment 
that it would be better to give the skiff her head in the 
rollers that I knew were coming, and let her take her 
chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that 
might never materialize. I still think that was the 
best thing to have done under the circumstances. 

Not until I was right down into that wild wallow 
of rock-churned foam was there a chance to get an 
idea of the rather remarkable bedrock formation 
which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the 
worrisome problem they have always been for river 
skippers. After piercing the black basaltic barrier 
of the reef, the chamiel shoots to the left and runs for 
a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge 
distances accurately) right along the foot of it. With 
a considerable stream of water cascading over the 
reef at almost right angles to the channel, a queer sort 
of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter 
which make it one of the most "unrhythmic" rapids I 
ever ran. Imsliallah pounded horribly, but gave not 
the savagest of the twisting combers a chance to put 
anything solid over her high held head. My erratic 
pecking strokes did not find gi'een water often enough 
to give her much way over the current, but she re- 
sponded instantly every time I dug deep to throw her 
head back after she had been buffeted sideways by 
an arrogant ruffian of a roller. 

As soon as I saw the way she was riding the rough- 
est of the water, I realized that the only chance of a 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 333 

bad mess-up would come tlirough my failure to keep 
her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn't likely 
to happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my 
pulling and gave just a quick short-arm jerk now and 
then to hold her steady. She was never near to 
broaching-to, and I'm mighty glad she wasn't. Uma- 
tilla is the sort of a rapid that hasn't quite the teeth to 
get the best of a carefully handled boat that is running 
in good luck, but which has the power, with a mile to 
spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets into 
trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that — 
with the snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the 
ghostly dance of the rollers on the other, and the im- 
penetrable grey curtain of the mist blanking every- 
thing beyond a radius of a hundred feet ; but Imshal- 
lah went through it with her head in the air and came 
waltzing out into the swirls below as cocky as a part- 
ridge. Indeed, that was just the trouble. The pair 
of us were just a bit too cocky over the way we had 
gone it blind and come through so smartly. It re- 
mained for a couple of lesser rapids to reduce both 
of us to a proper humility of spirit. 

I had been prepared to make a quick shift to the 
forward thwart in case there was a bad run of whirl- 
pools following the rapid, and so bring her up by the 
stern. This did not prove necessary, however, as the 
rapidly broadening river was too shallow for danger- 
ous under-cur rents. A short run in slackening water 
brought me to the town of Umatilla just as the lights 
were beginning to twinkle in the windows. Landing 
in the quiet water below a short stone jetty, I left my 
stuff in a near-by shack and sought the hotel. The 



334 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

pool-room "stove-decorators" refused to believe I had 
come through the rapid until I described it to them. 
Then they said it was better to be a lucky darnfool 
on the Columbia than an unlucky school-teacher. 
"School-teacher," it appeared, was the local apotheo- 
sis of Wisdom, and stood at the opposite pole from 
"darnfool." It seems that there had been two male 
school-teachers drowned in Umatilla that summer and 
only one darnfool, and they were rather put out at 
me for having failed to even up the score. Then they 
tried to spoil my evening by telling me all the things 
that had happened to people in Devil's Run Rapids, 
which I would go into just below the mouth of the 
river the first thing in the morning. They had me 
rather fussed for a while, too — until they told one 
about a farmer who, after having had his launch upset 
on his way home from his wedding, swam out with his 
bride in his arms. I told them I'd try to get that lusty 
swimmer to tow me through Devil's Run in the morn- 
ing, and turned in for a good sleep. 

Umatilla is a decrepit little old town that knew its 
best days away back in the last century, when it was 
the head of steamer navigation on the Columbia and 
the terminus of the freighting route to Idaho and 
eastern Washington. There are rich irrigated lands 
farther up the Umatilla River, but the development 
of these seems to have done little for the stagnating 
old settlement by the Columbia, which has little left 
but its historic memories. It was by the Umatilla 
that the rugged Hunt and the remnants of the Astor 
overland party came to the Columbia, after what was 
perhaps the most terrible journey ever made across 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 335 

the continent. And all through the time of the voya- 
geurs, the trappers and the pioneers, LTmatilla was 
only less important as a halting and portage point 
than the Cascades and the Dalles. 

I pulled away from the jetty of Umatilla at eight 
o'clock in the morning of November fifteenth. The 
sky was clear and there was no trace of the mist of 
the previous evening. There was brilliant, diamond- 
bright visibility on the river, with the usual early 
morning mirage effects, due to the chill stratum of 
air lying close to the water. This exaggerated con- 
siderably the height of distant riffles, lifting them up 
into eye-scope much sooner than they would have 
been picked up ordinarily. I put on my "Gieve" and 
blew it up in anticipation of a stiff fight at Devil's 
Run, only to find just enough rocks and riffles there 
to make me certain of locating them. I could see, 
however, that the formation was such that there might 
have been very troublesome water there at higher, and 
possibly lower, stages. Out of charity for the tellers 
of a good many awesome tales I had to listen to in 
respect of rapids I subsequently found to be compar- 
atively innocuous, I am inclined to believe that a num- 
ber of them were substantially straight accounts of 
disasters which had actually occurred in flood season, 
or at times when other water levels than those I en- 
countered made the riffles in question much more 
troublesome. 

I had an easy day of it for rapids, but, as a conse- 
quence of the comparatively slow water, rather a hard 
one for pulling. Canoe Encampment Rapids, twenty 
miles below Devil's Run, gave me a good lift for a 



336 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

mile or more, but not enough to make much of a res- 
pite from the oars if I was going to make the fifty- 
miles I had set for my day's run. I was still ten miles 
short of that at four o'clock when a drizzling rain set- 
ting in from the south-west decided me to land for 
shelter at Hepburn Junction, on the left bank. That 
was the first rain I had encountered since passing the 
Canadian Boundary, after a month of practically con- 
tinuous storms. There was nothing but a railway 
station at the Junction, but a nearby road-camp of- 
fered the chance of food and shelter. The young con- 
tractor — he was doing the concrete work on a State 
Highway bridge at that point — eyed my bedraggled 
figure somewhat disapprovingly at first, at a loss, 
apparently, as to whether I was a straight hobo or 
merely a disguised boot-legger. An instant later we 
had recognized each other as football opponents of 
Los Angeles-Pasadena school-days. His name was 
Walter Bees, of a family prominent among early 
Southern California pioneers. With the rain patter- 
ing on the tent roof, we talked each other to sleep la- 
menting the good old days of the "flying wedge" and 
massed play in football. 

It was clear again the following morning, but with 
a mistiness to the west masking Mount Hood and the 
Cascades, to which I was now coming very near. The 
cliffs had been rearing up higher and higher at every 
mile, great walls of red-brown and black rock strongly 
suggestive, in their rugged barrenness, of the but- 
tressed, turreted and columned formation through 
which the river runs below the mouth of the Spokane. 
Owyhee, Blalock and Four O'clock rapids were easy 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 337 

running, but the sustained roar which the slight up- 
river breeze brought to my ears as the black, right- 
angling gorge of Rock Creek came in sight was fair 
warning that there was really rough water ahead. 
Although I had been able to gather very little infor- 
mation along the way, the fact that I had so far de- 
scended but a small part of the two hundred feet of 
drop between Umatilla and Celilo Falls meant that 
the several rapids immediately ahead would have to 
make up for the loafing the Columbia had been guilty 
of for the last sixty miles. 

Taking advantage of the quiet stretch of water be- 
low Four O'clock Rapids, I went all over the skiff as 
she drifted in the easy current, tuning her up for the 
slap-banging she could not fail to receive in the long 
succession of sharp riffles which began at Rock Creek. 
In tightening up the brass screws along the gunwale, 
I removed and threw into the bottom of the boat both 
of my oar-locks. When I started to restore them to 
place as the roar of the nearing rapid grew louder, I 
found that one of them — the left — had been kicked 
out of reach under the bottom-boards. Rather than 
go to the trouble of tearing up the latter just then, I 
replaced the missing lock with one from my duffle- 
bag, a roughly-smithed piece of iron that I had car- 
ried away as a mascot from an old hatteau at Boat 
Encampment. It proved quite a bit too snug for its 
socket, besides being a deal wider than it should have 
been for the shaft of my light oar. There was a 
spoon oar, with a ring lock, under the thwarts, but I 
was somewhat chary of using it since its mate had 
snapped with me below Rock Island Rapids. 



338 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

The river narrowed sharply above Rock Creek, 
and, standing on a thwart as the skiff drifted down, 
I saw that the rapid dropped away in a solid stretch 
of white foam tumbling between black basaltic walls. 
There was a good, stiff fall, but it was reassuring that 
I could see right away to the end of the white water, 
which did not appear to continue around the ninety- 
degree bend at the foot. It was just the sort of water 
Imshallah was at her best in running, so I decided it 
was simply a matter of choosing the clearest channel 
and letting her go. A white cross-barred post on the 
mountainside at the angle of the bend gave me the 
bearing for the channel a minute or two before I 
made out the dip of the "intake." Stowing every- 
thing well aft, as I had done at Umatilla, I took up 
my oars and put her straight over the jade-green tip 
of the "V." 

That was rough-and-rowdy water, and no mistake. 
Every roller meant a slam, and every slam meant a 
shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly spray that 
came over her bows — nothing really to bother about. 
And so Imshallah would have run it right through — 
had not a sharp dig I gave with my left oar jerked 
the latter out of that "open-faced" Boat Encamp- 
ment mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards. 
The next moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into 
the troughs and over the crests of* the combers, dip- 
ping green water at every roll. 

Recovering my seat as quickly as possible, I tried 
to bring her head up again by backing with the right 
oar. She swung obediently enough, but I could not 
hold her bow down-stream once she was headed right. 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 339 

Rather than chance that "mascot" oar-lock again, I 
tumbled aft and did what I could with the paddle. 
Down as she was by the stern, that brought her head 
right out of the water and made it rather hopeless get- 
ting any way on her. She tumbled on through to the 
foot of the rapid without putting a gunwale under 
again, however, a circumstance for which I was highly 
thankful. She already had five or six inches of water 
in her, as I found as soon as I began to bail. It is 
just as well the trouble didn't occur at the head of the 
rapid. We were half way down when I ceased to 
function, and ImsJiallah had about all she wanted to 
navigate the remainder. I was also duly thankful 
that there was nothing more than a few bad swirls at 
the foot of the rapid. Standing on her tail as she 
was after I plumped do^vn in the stern with the 
paddle, a good strong whirlpool, such as must form 
at that sharp bend at high-water, would have made 
not more than one comfortable mouthful of her. 

From the foot of Rock Creek Rapids to the head 
of Squally Hook Rapids is something less than four 
miles of not very swift water. It took me about all 
the time the boat was drifting that distance to get her 
bailed out enough to retrieve my lost oar-lock from 
under the bottom-boards. Squally Hook, I could see, 
was much the same sort of a short, sharp, savage rapid 
as Rock Creek. There was the same restricted "in- 
take," and the same abrupt bend just beyond the foot; 
only below Squally Hook the river turned to the left, 
where at Rock Creek it had turned to the right. 

The sheer two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of 
the bend that gives its name to the rapid is well called 



340 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Squally Hook. What had been a gentle ten-mlles- 
an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving 
itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or 
thirty as I approached the rock-walled bend. Even a 
steady head-wind makes steering awkward in going 
into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. To 
avoid the necessity of any sharp change of course 
after I was once among the white-caps, I resolved to 
use every care in heading into the rapid at exactly the 
right place. That was why, when I became aware 
that two girls from a t arm-house on ^ bench above the 
right bank were motioning me imperiously in that 
direction, I swerved sharply from the course I had 
decided upon in an endeavour to locate the channel 
into which I was sure they were trying to tell me to 
head. Just what those confounded half-breed Loreli 
were really driving at I never did learn. Perhaps 
they had apples to sell, or some sweet cider; or per- 
haps they thought I had some cider that was not 
sweet. Perhaps it was pure sociability — the desire of 
a bit of a "talky-talk" with the green-boated voy- 
ageur. At any rate, they were certainly not trying 
to pilot me into a clear channel. That fact walloped 
me right between the eyes the instant I discovered 
that I had pulled beyond the entrance of a perfectly 
straight channel and that there was a barely sub- 
merged barrier of rock blocking the river all the way 
on to the right bank. 

That, of course, left me no alternative but to pull 
back for all that was in me to wait the "intake." It 
was a very similar predicament to the one in which the 
mist had tricked me at the head of Umatilla; only 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 341 

there I had room to make the channel and here I 
didn't. The current, running now hke a mill-race, 
carried me onto the reef sixty feet to the right of the 
smooth green chute of the "fairway." 

If it had taken half an hour instead of half a sec- 
ond to shoot out across the shoaling shelf of that froth- 
hidden reef there might have been time for a goodly 
bit of worrying anent the outcome. As it was, there 
was just the sudden thrill of seeing the bottom of the 
river leaping up to hit the bottom of the boat, the in- 
stant of suspense as she touched and dragged at the 
brink, and then the dizzy nose-dive of two or three 
feet down into deeper water. It was done so quickly 
that a stroke checked by the rock of the reef was 
finished in the up-boil below the little cascade. With 
an inch or two less of water she might have hung at 
the brink and swung beam-on to the current, which, 
of course, would have meant an instant capsize. 
The way it was, she made a straight clean jump of it, 
and only buried her nose in the souse-hole for the 
briefest part of a second when she struck. The rest 
was merely the matter of three hundred yards of 
rough running down a rock-clear channel. 

The authors of my near-mess-up came capering 
down the bank in pursuit as I swung out into the 
smoothening swirls, but I only shook my fist at them 
and resumed my oars. Darn women, anyway ! — when 
a man's running rapids, I mean. 

Now one would have thouglit that those two per- 
formances were enough for one afternoon, especially 
as both were very largely due to my own carelessness ; 
but I suppose the "trilogy of trouble" had to be 



342 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

rounded out complete. From the foot of Squally 
Hook Rapids to the head of Indian Rapids is about 
three miles. The water became ominously slack as I 
neared what appeared to be a number of great rock 
islands almost completely barring the river. It was 
not until I was almost even with the first of them that 
a channel, very narrow and very straight, opened up 
along the left bank. Various other channels led off 
among the islands, but with nothing to indicate how 
or where they emerged. That flume-like chute down 
the left bank was plainly the way the steamers went, 
and certainly the quickest and most" direct course on 
down the river. Peering through the rocky vista, I 
could see a rain storm racing up the Columbia, with 
the grey face of it just blotting out a wedge-shaped 
gorge through the southern cliffs which I knew must 
be the mouth of the John Day. That storm was 
another reason why I should choose the shortest and 
swiftest channel. There ought to be some kind of 
shelter where this important southern tributary met 
the Columbia. 

Of course, I knew all about still water running deep 
(which was of no concern to me) and "twisty" (which 
was of considerable concern) . I should certainly have 
given more thought to the matter of trimming for 
what was sure to be waiting to snap up Imshallah at 
the foot of that speeding chute of green-black water 
had not an old friend of mine breezed along just then. 
He was the engineer of the way freight on the "South- 
bank" line. We had been exchanging signals in pass- 
ing for three days now — twice on his down run and 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 343 

once on his up. This was the first opportunity I had 
had to show him how a rapid should be run, and I 
noted with gratification that he appeared to be slow- 
ing down so as to miss none of the fine points. On my 
part, dispensing with my wonted preliminary "look- 
see," I swung hard on the oars in an effort to get into 
the swiftest water before the spectators were out of 
sight. 

As the engine drew up even with me, I balanced 
my oars with my right hand for a moment and waved 
the engineer greetings with my left; he, in turn, ran 
the locomotive with his left hand and waved with his 
right. Then I saw that the fireman was also waving, 
and, farther back, the brakeman, from the top of a 
car, and the conductor from the "lookout" of the 
caboose. The occupants of the "dirigible grandstand" 
at the Poughkeepsie regattas had nothing on the 
crew of that way freight. And the latter, moreover, 
were treated to a burst of speed such as no man-pro- 
pelled boat in still water ever came close to. I was 
not pulling over four or five miles an hour myself, but 
that smooth, steep, unobstructed chute must have 
been spilling through its current at close to twenty. 
In a couple of hundred yards I pulled up three or 
four car-lengths on the comparatively slow-moving 
train, and I was still gaining when a sudden 'Hoot-a- 
too-tootr made me stop rowing and look around. I 
had recognized instantly the familiar danger signal, 
and was rather expecting to see a cow grazing with 
true bovine nonchalance on the weeds between the 
ties. Instead, it was the engineer's wildly gesticulat- 



344 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ing arm that caught my back-cast eye. He was point- 
ing just ahead of me, and down — evidently at some- 
thing in the water. 

Then I saw it too — a big black funnel-shaped hole 
down which a wide ribbon of river seemed to be tak- 
ing a sort of a spiral tumble. It was that entirely 
well-meant toot-a-toot , which was intended to prod 
me, not a cow, into activity, that was primarily re- 
sponsible for what followed. Had I not ceased row- 
ing on hearing it, it is probable that the skiff would 
have had enough way when she did strike that 
whirlpool to carry her right on through. As it 
was Imshallah simply did an undulant glide into 
the watery tentacles of the lurking octopus, snug- 
gled into his breast and prepared to spend the 
night reeling in a dervish dance with him. I must 
do the jade the justice of admitting that she had 
no intention of outraging the proprieties by going 
any further than a nocturnal terpsichorean revel. 
Going home for the night with him never entered her 
mind; so that when he tried to pull the "Cave-Man 
stuff" and drag her down to his under-water grottoes, 
she put up the most virtuous kind of resistance. 
The trouble was that I didn't want to go even as far 
as she did. Dancing was the last thing I cared for, 
with that rain-storm and night coming on. Yet — at 
least as far as my friends on the way freight ever 
knew — an all-night Danse d'Apache looked very 
much like what we were up against; for I recall dis- 
tinctly that when the train was disappearing round 
the next bend Imshallah, her head thrown ecstati- 
cally skyward, was still spinning in circles, while I 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 345 

continued to fan the air with my oars like an animated 
Dutch windmill. 

It was a mighty sizeable whirlpool, that black- 
mouthed maelstrom into which Imshallah's suscepti- 
bilitj^ had betrayed both of us. I should say that 
it was twice the diameter of the one which had given 
us such a severe shaking just above the Canadian 
Boundary, and with a "suck" in proportion. What 
helped the situation now, however, was the fact that 
the skiff carried rather less than half the weight she 
did then. At the rate she was taking water over the 
stern during that first attack, she could not have sur- 
vived for more than half a minute ; now she was riding 
so much more buoyantly that she was only dipping 
half a bucket or so once in every two or three rounds. 
When I saw that she could probably go on dancing 
for an hour or two without taking in enough water to 
put her under, something of the ludicrousness of the 
situation began to dawn on me. Missing the water 
completely with half of my strokes, and only dealing 
it futile slaps with the rest, I was making no more 
linear progress than if I had been riding a merry-go- 
round. I didn't dare to put the stern any lower by 
sliding down there and trying to paddle where there 
was water to be reached. Crowding her head down by 
working my weight forward finally struck me as the 
only thing to do. 

With the forward thwart almost above my head 
this was not an easy consummation to effect, especially 
with an oar in either hand. Luckily, I was now using 
the "ring" oar-locks, so that they came along on the 
oars when I unshipped the latter. Standing up was. 



346 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of course, out of the question. I simply slid off back- 
wards on to the bottom and wriggled forward in a 
sitting position until I felt my spine against the 
thwart. That brought her nose out of the clouds, and 
she settled down still farther when, after getting my 
elbows over the seat behind me, I worked up into a 
rowing position. 

The whirlpool was spinning from right to left, and 
one quick stroke with my left oar — against the cur- 
rent of the "spin," that is — was enough to shoot her 
clear. Bad swirls and two or three smaller "twisters" 
made her course a devious one for the next hundred 
yards, but she never swung in a complete revolution 
again. I pulled into smooth water just as the first 
drops of the storm began to patter on the back of my 
neck. 

The first riffle of John Day Rapids sent its warn- 
ing growl on the up-river wind before I was a quarter 
of a mile below the whirlpool, and ahead loomed a 
barrier of rock islands, rising out of the white foam 
churned up as the Columbia raced between them. I 
had to run the first riffle — an easy one — to make the 
mouth of the John Day, but that was as far as I went. 
I reckoned there had been quite enough excitement 
for one afternoon without poking into any more rough 
water against a rain and head wind. Dropping below 
the gravel bar off the mouth of the Day, I pulled 
fifty yards up-stream in a quiet current and moored 
Imshallah under the railway bridge. I camped for 
the night with a couple of motor tourists in a shack 
near the upper end of the bridge. My hosts were two 
genial souls, father and son, enjoying an indefinite 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 347 

spell of fishing, hunting and trapping on a stake the 
former had made in the sale of one of his "prospects" 
in southern Oregon. They were bluff, big-hearted, 
genuine chaps, both of them, and we had a highly- 
delightful evening of yarning. 

It was clear again the next morning, but with the 
barometer of my confidence jolted down several 
notches by what had occurred the previous afternoon. 
I pulled across the river and sought a quieter way 
through the second riffle of John Day Rapids than 
that promised by the boisterous steamer channel. By 
devious ways and sinuous, I wound this way and that 
among the black rock islands, until a shallow channel 
along the right bank let me out of the maze at the 
lower end. This waste of time and effort was largely 
due to funkiness on my part, and there was no neces- 
sity for it. The steamer channel is white and rough, 
with something of a whirlpool on the left side at the 
lower end, but nothing that there is any real excuse 
for avoiding. The third riffle was nothing to bother 
about; nor did Schofield's Rapids, two miles below, 
offer any difficulties. As a matter of fact. Adventure, 
having had its innings, was taking a day off, leaving 
me to follow the Golden Trail of Romance. To-day 
was "Ladies' Day" on the Columbia. 

Romance first showed her bright eyes at a little 
farm on the right bank, three miles below Schofield's 
Rapids. Landing here to ask about the channel 
through a rather noisy rapid beginning to boom ahead, 
I found a delectable apple-cheeked miss of about 
twelve in charge, her father and mother having gone 
across to Biggs for the day. She was in sore trouble 



348 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

at the moment of my advent because her newly-born 
brindle bull calf — her really-truly very own — 
wouldn't take nourishment properly. Now as luck 
would have it, teaching a calf table-manners chanced 
to be one of the few things I knew about stock-farm- 
ing. So I showed her how to start in by letting Cul- 
tus (that was merely a temporary name, she said, be- 
cause he was so bad) munch her own finger for a 
spell, from which, by slow degrees, the lacteal liaison 
with "Old Mooley" was established. It took us half 
an hour to get Cultus functioning on all fours, and 
rather longer than that to teach her collie, tabby 
cat, and the latter's three kittens to sit in a row and 
have their mouths milked into. It didn't take us long 
to exhaust "Old Mooley's" milk supply at that game, 
and when I finally climbed over the barnyard fence 
on the way down to my boat, poor Cultus was left 
butting captiously at an empty udder. "Apple 
Cheek" rather wanted me to stay until her father 
came back, saying that he had gone to Biggs to get 
a 'breed for a hired man, and that, if he didn't get 
the 'breed, maybe I would do. She almost burst into 
tears with shame when I told her I was a moving pic- 
ture actor seeking rest and local colour on the Colum- 
bia. "You a actor, and I made you milk 'Old 
Mooley !' " she sobbed ; and it took all my lunch ration 
of milk chocolate to bring back her smile. Then, like 
the Scotch bride at Windermere, she asked me if I was 
Bill Hart. Somehow, I wasn't quite base enough to 
tell her a concrete lie like that ; so I compromised with 
a comparative abstraction. I was a rising star in the 
movie firmament, I said; an eclectic, taking the best 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 349 

of all the risen stars, of whom much would be heard 
later. She was still pondering ''eclectic'^ when I 
pushed off into the current. Bless your heart, little 
"Apple Cheek," I hope you didn't get a spanking for 
wasting all of Cultus' dinner on the dogs and cats 
and the side of the barn! You were about the first 
person I met on the Columbia who didn't accuse me 
of being a boot-legger, and the only one who believed 
me hot off the bat when I said I was a movie star. 

The rapid ahead became noisier as I drew nearer, 
and when I saw it came from a reef which reached 
four-fifths of the way across the river from the left 
bank, I pulled in and landed at Biggs to inquire about 
the channel. The first man I spoke to called a second, 
and the latter a third, and so on ad infinitum. Pretty 
near to half the town must have been gathered at the 
railway station giving me advice at the end of a quar- 
ter of an hour. Each of them had a different sugges- 
tion to make, ranging from dragging through a half- 
empty back channel just below the town to taking 
the boat out and running it down the track on a 
push-cart. As they all were agreed that the steamers 
used to go down the opposite side, I finally decided 
that would be the best way through. Not to run too 
much risk of being carried down onto the reef in pull- 
ing across, I lined and poled a half mile up-stream 
before pushing off. Once over near the right bank, 
I found a channel broad and deep enough to have run 
at night. 

A couple of miles below Biggs the Columbia is 
divided by a long narrow rocky island. The deep, 
direct channeJh is that to the right, and is called Hell 



350 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Gate — the third gorge of that hackneyed name I had 
encountered since pushing off from Beavermouth. 
Possibly it was because I was fed-up with the name 
and all it connoted that I avoided this channel; more 
likely it was because Romance was at the tow-line. 
At any rate, I headed into the broad shallow channel 
that flows by the mouth of the River Des Chutes. It 
was up this tumultuous stream that Fremont, after 
camping at the Dalles and making a short boat voy- 
age below, started south over the mountains in search 
of the mythical river that was supposed to drain from 
the Utah basin to the Pacific in the^ vicinity of San 
Francisco — one of the indomitable "Pathfinder's" 
hardest journeys. 

Just beyond where the River of the Falls, true to 
name to the last, came cascading into the Columbia, 
Romance again raised her golden head — this time out 
of the steam rising above an Indian "Turkish-bath." 
The first time I had found her in the guise of a twelve- 
year-old; this time it was more like a hundred and 
twelve. One can't make certain within a year or two 
about a lady in a Turkish-bath ; it wouldn't be seemly 
even to try to do so. Pulling in close to the left bank 
to look at some queer mud-plastered Indian wickiups, 
a rush of steam suddenly burst from the side of the 
nearest one, and out of that spreading white cloud, 
rising like Aphrodite from the sea-foam, emerged 
the head and shoulders of an ancient squaw. She was 
horribly old^ — literally at the sans eyes, sans hair, sans 
teeth, sans everything (including clothes) stage. 
Cackling and gesticulating in the rolling steam, she 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 351 

was the belle ideal of the witch of one's fancy, mutter- 
ing incantations above her boihng cauldron. 

Fremont, in somewhat humorous vein, tells of vis- 
iting an Indian camp in this vicinity on the Columbia, 
and of how one of the squaws who had rushed forth in 
complete deshabille on hearing the voices of strangers, 
"properized" herself at the last moment by using her 
papoose — as far as it would go — as a shield. But 
this old "Aphrodite" I had flushed from cover was so 
old that, if her youngest child had been ready to hand, 
and that latter had had one of her own children within 
reach, and this third one had had a child available, I 
am certain that still another generation or two would 
have had to be descended before a papoose sufficiently 
young enough to make "properization" proper would 
have been found. I trust I make that clear. And 
when you have visualized it, isn't it a funny pyramid ? 

With two or three more "Aphrodites" beginning to 
bubble up through the steam, it is just possible that 
some such an ocular barrage actually was in process 
of formation; but I think not. My hard-plied oars 
had hardly lengthened my interval to much over fifty 
yards, when the whole lot of them trooped down to the 
river — steaming amazingly they were at the touch of 
the sharp early winter air — and plunged into the icy 
water. I learned later that this "sweat-bath" treat- 
ment is the favourite cure-all with the Indians of that 
part of the Columbia Basin. 

Where the left-hand channel returned to the main 
Columbia a mile or more below the mouth of the 
River Des Chutes I encountered an extensive series 



352 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

of rock-reefs which, until I drew near them, seemed to 
block the way completely. It was a sinuous course I 
wound in threading my way through the ugly basal- 
tic out-croppings, but the comparatively slow water 
robbed it of any menace. Once clear of the rocks, I 
found myself at the head of the long, lake-like stretch 
of water backed up above Celilo Falls. The low rum- 
ble of the greatest cataract of the lower Columbia 
was already pulsing in the air, while a floating cloud 
of "water-smoke," white against the encroaching 
cliffs, marked its approximate location. I was at last 
approaching the famous "long portage" of the old 
voyageurs, a place noted (in those days) for the worst 
water and the most treacherous Indians on the river. 
Now, however, the Indians no longer blocked the way 
and exacted toll, while the portage had been bridged 
by a Government canal. I caught the loom of the 
head-gate of the latter about the same time that the 
bridge of the "North-Bank" branch line, which spans 
the gorge below the falls, began rearing its blurred 
fret-work above the mists. Then, once again, Ro- 
mance. "Ladies' Day" was not yet over. As I 
pulled in toward the entrance to the canal, at the left 
of the head of the falls, I observed a very gaily- 
blanketed dame dancing up and down on the bank and 
gesticulating toward the opposite side of the river. 
As I landed and started to pull the skiff up on the 
gravelly beach, she came trotting down to entreat, in 
her best "Anglo-Chinook," that I ferry her to the 
opposite bank, where her home was, and, where, ap- 
parently, she was long overdue. She wasn't a beggar, 
she assured me, but — jingling her beaded bag under 



I 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 353 

my nose — was quite willing to pay me "hiyu chicka- 
mon" for my services. Nor was she unduly persistent. 
No sooner had I told her that I was in a ''Myu rusJi" 
and hadn't the time just then to be a squire of dames, 
than she bowed her head in stoical acquiescence and 
went back to her waving and croaking. It was that 
futile old croak (with not enough power behind it to 
send it a hundred yards across a mile- wide river) that 
caved my resolution. Shoving Imsliallah back into 
the water, I told her to pile in. 

And so Romance drew near to me again, this time 
perched up in the long-empty stern-sheets of my 
boat. This one was neither an infant nor a centu- 
rienne, but rather a fair compromise between the two. 
Nor was she especially fair nor especially compromis- 
ing (one couldn't expect that of a sixty-year-old 
squaw) ; but she was the most trusting soul I ever 
met, and that's something. The falls were thundering 
not fifty yards below — near enough to wet us with 
their up-blown spray, — and yet not one word of warn- 
ing did she utter about giving the brink a wide birth 
in pulling across. Not that I needed such a warn- 
ing, for the first thing I did was to start pulling up- 
stream in the slack water; but, all the same, it was a 
distinct compliment to have it omitted. As it turned 
out, there was nothing to bother about, for the cur- 
rent was scarcely swifter in mid-stream than along 
the banks. It was an easy pull. Romance beamed 
on me all the way, and once, when one of her stubby 
old toes came afoul of my hob-nailed boot, she bent 
over and gave a few propitiary rubs to — the boot 
... as if that had lost any cuticle. And at parting. 



354, DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

when I waved her money-bag aside and told her to 
keep her cJdckamon to spend on the movies, she came 
and patted me affectionately on the shoulder, repeat- 
ing over and over "Close tum-tum mikar And that, 
in Chinook, means: "You're very much all right!" 
As far as I can remember, that is the only unqualified 
praise I ever had from a lady — one of that age, I 
mean. Squiring squaws — especially dear old souls 
like that one — is a lot better fun than a man would 
think. 

It was four o'clock when I turned up at the lock- 
master's house at Celilo, and then {o find that that 
worthy had just taken his gun and gone off up on the 
cliffs to try and bag a goose. As it would probably 
be dark before he returned, his wife reckoned I had 
better put up with them for the night and make an 
early start through the Canal the following morning. 
The lock -master, a genial Texan, came down with his 
goose too late it get it ready for supper, but not to get 
it picked that night. Indeed, we made rather a gala 
occasion of it. "Mistah" Sides got out his fiddle and 
played "The Arkansaw Traveller" and "Turkey in 
the Straw," the while his very comely young wife ac- 
companied on the piano and their two children, the 
village school-marm and myself collaborated on the 
goose. It was a large bird, but many hands make 
light work; that is, as far as getting the feathers off 
the goose was concerned. Cleaning up the kitchen 
was another matter. As it was the giddy young 
school-teacher who started the trouble by putting 
feathers down my neck, I hope "Missus" Sides made 
that demure-eyed minx swab down decks in the morn- 





LITTED DRAWBRIDGE OM C2LIL0 CANAL ( dbovc) 
TUMWATER CORCE OF THE GRAND DALLES (bcloiv) 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 355 

ing before she went to teach the young idea how to 
shoot. 

There is no lock at the head of the Celilo Canal, 
but a gate is maintained for the purpose of regulating 
flow and keeping out drift. Sides, silhouetted against 
the early morning clouds, worked the gates and let 
me through into the narrow, concrete-walled canal, 
down which I pulled with the thunder of the falls on 
one side and on the other the roar of a passing freight. 
The earth-shaking rumbles died down presently, and 
beyond the bend below the railway bridge I found 
myself rowing quietly through the shadow of the 
great wall of red-black cliffs that dominate the Dalles 
from the south. 

Celilo Falls is a replica on a reduced scale of the 
Horse-shoe cataract at Niagara. At middle and 
low-water there is a drop of twenty feet here, but at 
the flood-stage of early summer the fall is almost 
wiped out in the lake backed up from the head of the 
Tum water gorge of the Dalles. The Dalles then 
form one practically continuous rapid, eight or nine 
miles in length, with many terrific swirls and whirl- 
pools, but with all rocks so deeply submerged that it 
is possible for a well-handled steamer to run through 
in safety — provided she is lucky. With the comple- 
tion of the Canal this wildest of all steamer runs was 
no longer necessary, but in the old days it was at- 
tempted a number of times when it was desired to take 
some craft that had been constructed on the upper 
river down to Portland. The first steamer was run 
through successfully in May, 1866, by Captain T. J. 
Stump, but the man who became famous for his sue- 



356 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

cess in getting away with this dare-devil stunt was 
Captain James Troup, perhaps the greatest of all 
Columbia skippers. Professor W. D. Lyman gives 
the following graphic account of a run through the 
Dalles with Captain Troup, on the D. S. Baker, in 
1888. 

"At that strange point in the river, the whole vast volume 
is compressed into a channel but one hundred and sixty feet 
wide at low water and much deeper than wide. Like a huge 
mill-race the current continues nearly straight for two miles, 
when it is hurled with frightful force aga^inst a massive bluff. 
Deflected from the blujBP, it turns at a sharp angle to be 
split asunder by a low reef of rock. When the Balier was 
drawn into the suck of the current at the head of the 'chute* 
she swept down the channel, which was almost black, with 
streaks of foam, to the bluff, two miles in four minutes. 
There feeling the tremendous refluent wave, she went careen- 
ing over toward the sunken reef. The skilled captain had her 
perfectly in hand, and precisely at the right moment rang the 
signal bell, 'Ahead, full speed,' and ahead she went, just 
barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus close was it 
necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had struck 
the tooth-like point of the reef broadside on, she would have 
been broken in two and carried in fragments on either side. 
Having passed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful 
calm bay below and the feat was accomplished." 

There is a fall of eighty-one feet in the twelve miles 
from the head of Celilo Falls to the foot of the Dalles. 
This is the most considerable rate of descent in the 
whole course of the Columbia in the United States, 
though hardly more than a third of that over stretches 



I 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 357 

of the Big Bend in Canada. It appeared to be custom- 
ary for the old voyageurs to make an eight or ten 
miles portage here, whether going up or down stream, 
though there were doubtless times when their big 
hatteauw were equal to running the Dalles below 
Celilo. I climbed out and took hurried surveys of 
both Tumwater and Five-Mile (sometimes called 
"The Big Chute") in passing, and while they ap- 
peared to be such that I would never have consid- 
ered taking a chance with a skiff in either of them, 
it did look as though a big double-ender, with an expe- 
rienced crew of oarsmen and paddlers, would have 
been able to make the run. That was a snap judg- 
ment, formed after the briefest kind of a "look-see," 
and it may well be that I was over optimistic. 

The Celilo Canal, which was completed hy the Gov- 
ernment about five years ago, is eight and a half miles 
long, has a bottom width of sixty-five feet, and a 
depth of eight feet. It has a total lift of eighty feet, 
of which seventy are taken by two locks in flight at 
the lower end. That this canal has failed of its ob- 
ject — that of opening up through navigation between 
tide-water and the upper Columbia — is due to no de- 
fect of its own from an engineering standpoint, but 
rather to the fact that, first the railway, and now the 
truck, have made it impossible for river steamers to 
pay adequate returns in the face of costly operation 
and the almost prohibitive risks of running day after 
day through rock-beset rapids. There is not a 
steamer running regularly on the Columbia above 
the Dalles to-day. The best service, perhaps, which 
the Celilo Canal rendered was the indirect one of 



358 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

forcing a very considerable reduction of railway 
freight rates. That alone is said to have saved the 
shippers of eastern Oregon and Washington many 
times the cost of this highly expensive undertaking. 

I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Canal, stop- 
ping, as I have said, at Tumwater and Five-Mile, 
and at the latter giving the lock-master a hand in 
dropping Imsliallah down a step to the next level. 
Rowing past a weird "fleet" of laid-up salmon-wheels 
in the Big Eddy Basin, I sheered over to the left bank 
in response to a jovial hail, and found myself shaking 
hands with Captain Stewart Winslow, in command of 
the Government dredge, Umatilla, and one of the 
most experienced skippers on the upper river. He 
said that he had been following the progress of my 
voyage by the papers with a good deal of interest, 
and had been on the lookout to hold me over for a 
yarn. As I was anxious to make the Dalles that 
night, so as to get away for an early start on the 
following morning, he readily agreed to join me for 
the run and dinner at the hotel. 

While Captain Winslow was making a hurried 
shift of togs for the river, I had a brief but highly 
interesting visit with Captain and JNIrs. Saunders. 
Cajjtain Saunders, who is of the engineering branch 
of the army, has been in charge of the Celilo Canal 
for a number of years. Mrs. Saunders has a very 
Jarge and valuable collection of Indian relics and 
curios, and at the moment of my arrival was follow- 
ing with great interest the progress of a State High- 
way cut immediately in front of her door, which was 
uncovering, evidently in an old graveyard, some stone 



PASCO TO THE DALLES 359 

mortars of unusual size and considerable antiquity. 
When Captain Winslow was ready, we went down 
to the skiff, and pulled along to the first lock. With 
Captain Saunders and a single helper working the 
machinery, passing us down to the second lock and 
on out into the river was but the matter of a few 
minutes. 

Big Eddy must be rather a fearsome hole at high 
water, but below middle stage there is not enough 
power behind its slow-heaving swirls to make them 
troublesome. It was a great relief to have a com- 
petent river-man at the paddle again, and my rather 
over-craned neck was not the least beneficiary by the 
change. The narrows at Two-Mile were interesting 
rather for what they might be than what they were. 
Beyond a lively snaking about in the conflicting cur- 
rents, it was an easy passage through to the smooth 
water of the broadening river below. One or two 
late salmon-wheels plashed eerily in the twilight as 
we ran past the black cliffs, but fishing for the season 
was practically over weeks before. We landed just 
above the steamer dock well before dark, beached the 
skiff, stowed mj?- outfit in the warehouse, and reached 
the hotel in time to avoid an early evening shower. 
Captain Winslow had to dine early in order to catch 
his train back to Big Eddy, but we had a mighty 
good yarn withal. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE HOME STRETCH 

The Dalles was the largest town I touched on the 
Columbia, and one of the most attractive. Long one 
of the largest wool-shipping centres of the United 
States, it has recently attained to considerable im- 
portance as a fruit market. It will not, however, 
enter into anything approaching the full enjoyment 
of its birthright until the incalculably enormous 
power possibilities of Cehlo Falls and the Dalles 
have been developed. So far, as at every other point 
along the Columbia with the exception of a small 
plant at Priest Rapids, nothing has been done along 
this line. When it is. The Dalles will be in the way 
of becoming one of the most important industrial 
centres of the West. 

In the days of the voyageurs The Dalles was no- 
torious for the unspeakably treacherous Indians who 
congregated there to intimidate and plunder all who 
passed that unavoidable portage. They were lying, 
thieving scoundrels for the most part, easily intimi- 
dated by a show of force and far less prone to stage 
a real fight than their more warlike brethren who 
disputed the passage at the Cascades. That this 
"plunderbund" tradition is one which the present- 
day Dalles is making a great point of living down, 
I had conclusive evidence of through an incident 
that arose in connection with my hotel bill. I had 

360 



THE HOME STRETCH 361 

found my room extremely comfortable and well ap- 
pointed, so that the bill presented for it at my de- 
parture, far from striking me as unduly high, seemed 
extremely reasonable. I think I may even have said 
something to that effect ; yet, two days later in Port- 
land, I received a letter containing an express order 
for one dollar, and a note saying that this was the 
amount of an unintentional overcharge for my room. 
That was characteristic of the treatment I received 
from first to last in connection with my small finan- 
cial transactions along the way. I never dreamed 
that there were still so many people in the world 
above profiteering at the expense of the passing 
tourist until I made my Columbia voyage. 

I had intended, by making an early start from 
The Dalles, to endeavour to cover the forty odd miles 
to the head of the Cascades before dark of the same 
day. Two things conspired to defeat this ambitious 
plan: first, some unexpected mail which had to be. 
answered, and, second, my equally unexpected book- 
ing of a passenger — a way passenger who had to be 
landed well short of the Cascades. Just as I was 
cleaning up the last of my letters, the hotel clerk 
introduced me to the "Society Editor" of The Dalles 
Chronicle, who wanted an interview. I told her that 
I was already two hours behind schedule, but that if 
she cared to ride the running road with me for a while, 
she could have the interview, with lunch thrown in, 
on the river. She accepted with alacrity, but begged 
for half an hour to clean up her desk at the Chronicle 
office and change to outdoor togs. Well within that 
limit, she was back again at the hotel, flushed, pant- 



362 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

ing and pant-ed, and announced that she was ready. 
Picking up a few odds and ends of food at the near- 
est grocery, we went down to the dock, where I 
launched and loaded up Imshallah in time to push 
off at ten o'clock. I had, of course, given up all idea 
of making the Cascades that day, and reckoned that 
Hood River, about twenty-five miles, would be a com- 
fortable and convenient halting place for the night. 
And so it would have been. . . . 

I don't remember whether or not we ever got very 
far with the "interview," but I do recall that Miss 

S talked very interestingly of Johan Bojer and 

his work, and that she was in the midst of a keenly 
analytical review of "The Great Hunger" when a 
sudden darkening of what up to then had been only 
a slightly overcast sky reminded me that I had been 
extremely remiss in the matter of keeping an eye on 
the weather. Indeed, up to that moment the menace 
of storms on the river had been of such small mo- 
ment as compared to that of rapids that I had come 
to rate it as no more than negligible. Now, however, 
heading into the heart of the Cascades, I was ap- 
proaching a series of gorges long notorious among 
river voyageurs as a veritable "wind factory" — a 
"storm-breeder" of the worst description. After all 
that I had read of the way in which the early pioneers 
had been held up for weeks by head winds between 
the Dalles and the Cascades, there was no excuse for 
my failure to keep a weather eye lifting at so treach- 
erous a point. The only alibi I can think of is Adam's : 
"The woman did it." Nor is there any ungallantry 
in that plea. Quite the contrary, in fact; for I am 




PALISADE ROCK, LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER 




MUI-TNOMAH FALLS, COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY, NEAR PORTLAND 



THE HOME STRETCH 363 

quite ready to confess that I should probably fail to 
watch the clouds again under similar circumstances. 

There were a few stray mavericks of sunshine 
shafts trying to struggle down to the inky pit of the 
river as I turned to give the weather a once-over, but 
they were quenched by the sinister cloud-pall even as 
I looked. The whole gorge of the river-riven Cas- 
cades was heaped full of wallowing nimbus which, 
driven by a fierce wind, was rolling up over the water 
like an advancing smoke-barrage. The forefront of 
the wind was marked by a wild welter of foam-white 
water, while a half mile behind a streaming curtain 
of gray-black indicated the position of the advancing 
wall of the rain. It would have been a vile-looking 
squall even in the open sea; here the sinister threat of 
it was considerably accentuated by the towering cliffs 
and the imminent outcrops of black rock studding the 
surface of the river. I had no serious doubt that 
Imshallah, after all the experience she had had in 
rough water, would find any great difficulty in riding 
out the blow where she was, but since it hardly seemed 
hospitable to subject my lady guest to any more of a 
wetting than could be avoided, I turned and headed 

for the lee shore. INIiss S was only about half 

muffled in the rubber saddle poncho and the light 
"shed" tent I tossed to her before resuming my oars 
when the wall of the wind — hard and solid as the side 
of a flying barn — struck us full on the starboard beam. 
It was rather careless of me, not heading up to meet 
that squall before it struck; but the fact was that I 
simply couldn't take seriously anything that it seemed 
possible could happen on such a deep, quiet stretch of 



364 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

river. The consequence of taking that buffet on the 
beam was quite a merry bit of a mix-up. The shower- 
bath of blown spray and the dipping under of the 
lee rail were rather the least of my troubles. What 
did have me guessing for a minute, though, was the 
result of the fact that that confounded fifty-miles-an- 
hour zephyr got under the corners of the tent and, 
billowing it monstrously, carried about half of it over- 
board ; also a somewhat lesser amount of Miss S , 

who was just wrapping herself in it. I had to drop 
my oars to effect adequate salvage operations, and so 
leave the skiff with her port gunwale pretty nearly 
hove under. As soon as I got around to swing her 
head up into the teeth of the wind things eased off a 
bit. 

The river was about a mile wide at this point — ten 
miles below The Dalles and about opposite the station 
of Rowena — and, save for occasional outcroppings 
of black bedrock, fairly deep. The north shore was 
rocky all the way along, but that to the south (which 
was also the more protected on account of a jutting 
point ahead) was a broad sandy beach. That beach 
seemed to offer a comparatively good landing, and, 
as it extended up-stream for half a mile, it appeared 
that I ought to have no great difficulty in fetching it. 
The first intimation I had that this might not be as 
easy as I had reckoned came when, in spite of the fact 
that I was pulling down-stream in a three or four- 
mile current, the wind backed the skiff up-stream 
past a long rock island at a rate of five or six miles 
an hour. That was one of the queerest sensations I 
experienced on the whole voyage — having to avoid 



THE HOME STRETCH 365 

bumping the lower end of a rock the while I could 
see the riffle where a strong current was flowing 
around the upper end. 

I settled down to pulling in good earnest after 
that rather startling revelation, trying to hold the 
head of the skiff just enough to the left of the eye of 
the wind to give her a good shoot across the current. 
Luckily, I had been pretty well over toward the south 
bank when the wind struck. There was only about a 
quarter of a mile to go, but I was blown back just 
about the whole length of that half mile of sandy beach 
in making it. The last hundred yards I was rowing 
"all out," and it was touch-and-go as to whether the 
skiff was going to nose into soft sand or the lower end 
of a long stretch of half -submerged rocks. I was a 
good deal relieved when it proved to be the beach — 
by about twenty feet. We would have made some 
kind of a landing on the rocks without doubt, but 
hardly without giving the bottom of the boat an 
awful banging. 

The sand proved unexpectedly soft when I jumped 
out upon it, but I struck firm bottom before I had 
sunk more than an inch or two above my boot tops 
and managed to drag the skiff up far enough to es- 
cape the heaviest of the wash of the waves. It was 
rather a sodden bundle of wet canvas that I carried 
out and deposited under a pine tree beyond high- 
water mark, but the core of it displayed considerable 
life after it had been extracted and set up to dry be- 
fore the fire of pitchy cones that I finally succeeded 

in teasing into a blaze. To show Miss S that the 

storm hadn't affected my equanimity, I asked her 



366 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

to go on with her review of "The Great Hunger;" but 
she rephed her own was more insistent, and reminded 
me that I hadn't served lunch yet. Well, rain-soaked 
biscuit and milk chocolate are rather difficult to take 
without a spoon; but a pound of California seedless 
raisins, if munched slowly, go quite a way with two 
people. 

The worst of the squall was over in half an hour, 
and, anxious to make hay while the sun shone, I 
pushed off again in an endeavor to get on as far as 
I could before the next broadside opened up. Miss 

S I landed at the Rowena Ferry, to catch the 

afternoon train back to The Dalles. She was a good 
ship-mate, and I greatly regret she had the bad luck 
to be my passenger on the only day I encountered a 
really hard blow in all of my voyage. 

There was another threatening turret of black 
cloud beginning to train its guns as I pulled out into 
the stream beyond Rowena, and it opened with all 
the big stuff it had before I had gone a mile. While 
it lasted, the bombardment was as fierce as the first 
one. Fortunately, its ammunition ran out sooner. 
I kept the middle of the current this time, pulling as 
hard as I could against the wind. I got a thorough 
raking, fore-and-aft, for my temerity, but, except at 
the height of the wind, I managed to avoid the igno- 
miny of being forced back against the stream. 

The third squall, which opened up about three- 
thirty, was a better organized assault, and gave me a 
pretty splashy session of it. When that blow got the 
range of me I was just pulling along to the left of a 
desolate tongue of black basalt called Memaloose 



THE HOME STRETCH 367 

Island. For many centuries this rocky isle was used 
by the Klickatats as a burial place, which fact induced 
a certain Indian-loving pioneer of The Dalles, Vic- 
tor Trevett by name, to order his own grave dug 
there. A tall marble shaft near the lower end of the 
island marks the spot. Now I have no objection to 
marble shafts in general, nor even to this one in par- 
ticular — as a shaft. I just got tired of seeing it, that 
was all. If any skipper on the Columbia ever passed 
Vic Trevett's monument as many times in a year as 
I did in an hour, I should like to know what run he 
was on. 

Swathed in oilskins, my potential speed was cut 
down both by the resistance my augmented bulk of- 
fered to the wind and the increased difficulty of pull- 
ing with so much on. Down past the monument I 
would go in the lulls, and up past the monument I 
would go before the gusts. There, relentless as the 
Flying Dutchman, that white shaft hung for the best 
part of an hour. I only hope what I said to the wind 
didn't disturb old Vic Trevett's sleep. Finally, a 
quarter of an hour's easing of the blow let me double 
the next point; and then it turned loose with all its 
guns again. Quite gone in the back and legs, I gave 
up the unequal fight and started to shoot off quarter- 
ing toward the shore. Glancing over my shoulder in 
an endeavour to get some kind of an idea of where, and 
against what, I might count on striking, an astound- 
ing sight met my eyes, a picture so weird and infernal 
that I had to pause (mentally) and assure myself 
that those raisins I had for lunch had not been "pro- 
cessed." 



368 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

Of all the sinister landscapes I ever saw — including 
the lava fields of a good many volcanoes and a num- 
ber of the world's most repulsive "bad lands" — that 
which opened up to me as I tried to head in beyond 
that hard-striven-for point stands alone in my mem- 
ory for sheer awesomeness. The early winter twi- 
light had already begun to settle upon the gloomy 
gorge, the duskiness greatly accentuating the all-per- 
vading murk cast upon the river by the pall of the 
sooty clouds. All round loomed walls of black ba- 
salt, reflecting darkly in water whose green had been 
completely quenched by the brooding^purple shadows. 
The very pines on the cliffs merged in the solid 
opacity behind their scraggly forms, and even the 
fringe of willows above high-water-mark looped round 
the crescent of beach below like a fragment of mourn- 
ing band. And that stretch of silver sand — the one 
thing in the whole infernal landscape whose white- 
ness the gloom alone could not drown: how shall I 
describe the jolt it gave me when I discovered that 
six or seven black devils were engaged in systemati- 
cally spraying it with an inky liquid that left it as 
dark and dead to the eye as a Stygian strand of an- 
thracite? It was a lucky thing those raisins had not 
been "processed;" else I might not have remembered 
readily what I had heard of the way the "South- 
Bank" railway had been keeping the sand from drift- 
ing over its tracks by spraying with crude oil the 
bars uncovered at low water. 

With that infernal mystery cleared up, my mind 
was free to note and take advantage of a rather re- 
markable incidental phenomenon. The effect of oil 



THE HOME STRETCH 369 

on troubled waters was no new thing to me, for on a 
number of occasions I had helped to rig a bag of ker- 
osene-soaked oakum over the bows of a schooner 
hove-to in a gale; but to find a stretch of water al- 
ready oiled for me at just the time and place I was in 
the sorest need of it — well, I couldn't see where those 
manna-fed Children of Israel wandering in the desert 
found their advance arrangements looked to any bet- 
ter than that. The savage wind-whipped white-caps 
that were buffeting me in mid-stream dissolved into 
foam-streaked ripples the moment they impinged 
upon the broadening oil-sleeked belt where the petro- 
leum had seeped riverward from the sprayed beach. 
A solid jetty of stone could not have broken the 
rollers more effectually. On one side was a wild wal- 
low of tossing water; on the other — as far as the sur- 
face of the river was concerned — an almost complete 
calm. 

It was a horrible indignity to heap upon Imshallah 
(and, after the way she had displayed her resentment 
following her garbage shower under the Wenatchee 
bridge, I knew that spirited lady would make me 
pay dear for it if ever she had the chance) ; still — dead 
beat as I was — there was nothing else to do but to 
head into that oleaginous belt of calm and make the 
best of it. The wind still took a deal of bucking, but 
with the banging of the waves at an end my progress 
was greatly accelerated. Hailing the black devils on 
the bank, I asked where the nearest village was con- 
cealed, to learn that Moosier was a couple of miles 
below, but well back from the river. They rather 
doubted that I could find my way to the town across 



370 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

the mudflats, but thought it might be worth trying in 
preference to pushing on in the dark to Hood River. 

Those imps of darkness were right about the diffi- 
culty of reaching Moosier after nightfall. A small 
river coming in at that point seemed to have deposited 
a huge bar of quicksand all along the left bank, and 
I would never have been able to make a landing at 
all had not a belated duck -hunter given me a hand. 
After tying up to an oar, he very courteously under- 
took to pilot me to the town through the half-over- 
flowed willow and alder flats. As a consequence of 
taking the lead, it was the native rather than the visitor 
who went off the caving path into the waist-deep little 
river. Coming out of the woods, a hundred-yards of 
slushing across a flooded potato-patch brought us to 
the railway embankment, and from there it was com- 
paratively good going to the hotel. Luckily, the lat- 
ter had a new porcelain tub and running hot water, 
luxuries one cannot always be sure of in the smaller 
Columbia River towns. 

It was just at the close of the local apple season, and 
I found the hotel brimming over with departing pack- 
ers. Most of the latter were girls from Southern 
California orange-packing houses, imported for the 
season. Several of them came from Anaheim, and 
assured me that they had packed Valencias from a 
small grove of mine in that district. They were a 
good deal puzzled to account for the fact that a man 
with a Valencia grove should be "hobo-ing" round 
the country like I was, and seemed hardly to take me 
seriously when I assured them it was only a matter 
of a year or two before all farmers would be hobos. 




BRIDGE ON COLUMBIA HIGHWAY NEAR PORTLAND, OREGON 



THE HOME STRETCH 371 

It's funny how apple-packing seems to bring out all 
the innate snobbery in a lady engaging in that lucra- 
tive calling; they didn't seem to think tramping was 
quite respectable. I slept on the parlour couch until 
three in the morning, when I "inherited" the room 
occupied by a couple of packettes departing by the 
Portland train. As they seem to have been addicted 
to ''attar of edelweiss,'* or something of the kind, and 
there hadn't been time for fumigation, I rather re- 
gretted making the shift. 

When I had splashed back to the river in the morn- 
ing, I found that Imshallah anxious to hide the 
shame of that oil-bath, had spent the night trying to 
bury herself in the quicksand. Dumping her was 
out of the question, and I sank mid-thigh deep two 
or three times myself before I could persuade the 
sulking minx even to take the water. I knew she 
would take the first chance that offered to rid herself 
of the filth, just as she had before; but, with no swift 
water above the* Cascades, there seemed small likeli- 
hood of her getting out-of-hand. Knowing that she 
was quite equal to making a bolt over the top of that 
terrible cataract if she hadn't managed to effect some 
sort of purification before reaching there, I made an 
honest attempt at conciliation by landing at the first 
solid beach I came to and giving her oily sides a good 
swabbing down with a piece of carpet. That seemed 
to mollify the temperamental lady a good deal, but 
just the same I knew her too well to take any chances. 

Of all the great rivers in the world, there are only 
two that have had the audacity to gouge a course 
straight through a major range of mountains. These 



372 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

are the Brahmaputra, which clove a way through the 
Himalaya in reaching the Baj^ of Bengal from Tibet, 
and the Columbia, which tore the Cascades asunder 
in making its way to the Pacific. But the slow pro- 
cess of the ages by which the great Asian river won its 
way to the sea broke its heart and left it a lifeless 
thing. It emerges from the mountains with barely 
strength enough to crawl across the most dismal of 
deltas to lose its identity in the brackish estuaries at 
its many insignificant mouths. The swift stroke by 
which the Cascades were parted for the Columbia 
left "The Achilles of Rivers" unimpaired in vigour. 
It rolls out of the mountains with a force which end- 
less geons have not weakened to a point where it was 
incapable of carrying the silt torn down by its ero- 
sive actions far out into the sea. It is the one great 
river that does not run for scores, perhaps hundreds, 
of miles through a flat, monotonous delta; the one 
great stream that meets the ocean strength for 
strength. The Nile, the Niger, the Amazon, the 
Yangtse, the INIississippi — all of the other great rivers 
— find their way to the sea through miasmic swamps; 
only the Columbia finishes in a setting worthy of that 
in which it takes its rise. Nay, more than that. Su- 
perlative to the last degree as is the scenery along the 
Columbia, from its highest glacial sources in the 
Rockies and Selkirks right down to the Cascades, 
there is not a gorge, a vista, a panorama, a cascade 
of which I cannot truthfully say: "That reminds me 
of something I have seen before." The list would 
include the names of most of the scenic wonders that 
the world has come to know as the ultimate expression 



THE HOME STRETCH 373 

of the grand aiid the sublime; but in time my record 
of comparisons would be complete. But for the dis- 
tinctive grandeur of that fifty miles of cliff -walled 
gorge where the Columbia rolls through its Titan- 
torn rift in the Cascades, I fail completely to find a 
comparison. It is unique; without a near-rival of its 
kind. 

Because so many attempts — all of them more or 
less futile — have been made to describe the Cascade 
Gorge of the Columbia, I shall not rush in here with 
word pictures where even railway pamphleteers have 
failed. The fact that several of the points I attained 
in the high Selkirks are scarcely more than explored, 
and that many stretches I traversed of the upper 
river are very rarely visited, must be the excuse for 
such essays at descriptions as I have now and then 
been tempted into in the foregoing chapters. That 
excuse is not valid in connection with the Cascade 
Gorge, and, frankly, I am mighty glad of the chance 
to side-step the job. I must beg leave, however, to 
make brief record of an interesting "scenic coinci- 
dence" that was impressed on my mind the afternoon 
that I pulled through the great chasm of the Cascades. 

It was a day of sunshine and showers, with the 
clouds now revealing, now concealing the towering 
mountain walls on either hand. The ahnost continu- 
ous rains of the last four days had greatly augmented 
the flow of the streams, and there was one time, along 
toward evening, that I counted seven distinct water- 
falls tumbling over a stretch of tapestried cliff on the 
Oregon side not over two miles in length. And while 
these shimmering ribbons of fluttering satin were still 



374 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

within eye-scope, a sudden shifting of the clouds un- 
covered in quick succession three wonderful old vol- 
canic cones — Hood, to the south, Adams, to the north, 
and a peak which I think must have been St. Helens 
to the west. Instantly the lines of Tennyson's Lotos 
Eaters came to my mind. 

"A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke, 
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; 
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, 
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. 
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow 
From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops, 
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow. 
Stood sunset-flushed ; and, dew'd with showery drops, 
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse." 

Tennyson, of course, was writing of some tropic 
land thirty or forty degrees south of Oregon, for in 
the next verse he speaks of palms and brings the 
"mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters" swimming 
about the keel; and yet there is his description, per- 
fect to the last, least word, of what any one may see 
in a not-too-cloudy day from the right point on the 
lower Columbia. 

The Hood and the White Salmon flow into the 
Columbia almost opposite each other, the former from 
Mount Hood, to the south, and the latter from Mount 
Adams, to the north. White Salmon, perched on the 
mountains of the Washington side, is, so far as I can 
recall, the "Swiss-iest" looking village in America. 
At close range it would doubtless lose much of its 
picturesqueness, but from the river it is a perfect bit 



THE HOME STRETCH 375 

of the Tyrol or the Bernese-Oberland. The Hood 
River Valley is one of the very richest in all the West, 
running neck-and-neck with Yakima and Wenatchee 
for the Blue Ribbon honours of North-western apple 
production. It is also becoming a dairying centre of 
considerable importance. I was genuinely sorry that 
my "through" schedule made it impossible to visit 
a valley of which I had heard so much and so favour- 
ably. 

Nearing the Cascades, I headed over close to the 
Oregon bank for a glimpse of the famous "sunken 
forest." This is one of the strangest sights on the 
lower river. For a considerable distance I pulled 
along the stumps of what had once been large 
forest trees, the stubby boles showing plainly through 
the clear water to a very considerable depth. There 
is some division of opinion as to whether these trees 
were submerged following the damming up of the 
river by the slide which formed the Cascades, or 
whether they have slid in from the mountainside at a 
later date. As there is still enough of a riverward 
earth-movement to necessitate a realignment of the 
rails on the south bank of the Cascades, it is probable 
that the latter is the correct theory. The self-preser- 
vative character of Oregon pine is proverbial, but it 
hardly seems reasonable to believe that it would last 
through the very considerable geologic epoch that 
must have elapsed since the Cascades were formed. 

Hugging the Oregon shore closely, I pulled down 
toward tlie liead of the Cascades canal. The water 
continued almost lake-like in its slackness even after 
the hea\y rumble of the fall began to beat upon the 



376 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

air. I was taking no chances of a last-minute bolt 
from the still restive Imshallah, however, and skirted 
the sandy bank so closely that twice I found myself 
mixed up in the remains of the past season's salmon- 
traps. Passing a big sawmill, I entered the canal and 
kept rowing until I came plump up against the lofty 
red gates. An astonishingly pretty girl who peered 
down from above said she didn't know what a lock- 
master was (being only a passenger waiting for the 
steamer herself), but thought a man hammering on 
the other side of the gate looked like he might be 
something of that kind. She was right. The lock- 
master said he would gladly put me through, but 
would be greatly obliged if I would wait until he 
locked down the steamer, as he was pretty busy at the 
moment. That would give me half an hour to go 
down and size up the tail of the Cascades, which I 
would have to run immediately on coming out at the 
foot of the lock. 

There is a fall of twenty-five feet at the Cascades, 
most of it in the short, sharp pitch at the head. It is 
this latter stretch that is avoided by the canal and 
locks, the total length of which is about half a mile. 
The two lock chambers are identical in dimensions, 
each being ninety feet by four hundred and sixty-five 
in the clear. They were opened to navigation in 1896, 
and were much used during the early years of the 
present century. With the extension of the rail- 
ways, (especially with the building of the "North- 
bank" line) , and the improvement of the roads, with 
the incidental increase of truck-freighting, it became 
more and more difficult for the steamers to operate 



THE HOME STRETCH 377 

profitably even on the lower river. One after another 
they had been taken off their runs, until the J. N. 
Teal, for which I was now waiting, was the last 
steamer operating in a regular service on the Colum- 
bia above Portland. 

Opening the great curving gates a crack, the lock- 
master admitted Imshallah to the chamber, from 
where — in the absence of a ladder — I climbed up fifty 
feet to the top on the beams of the steel-work. That 
was a pretty stiff job for a fat man, or rather one who 
had so recently been fat. I was c^own to a fairly 
compact two hundred and twenty by now, but even 
that required the expenditure of several foot-tons of 
energy to lift it out of that confounded hole. The 
main fall of the Cascades was roaring immediately on 
my right, just beyond the narrow island that had been 
formed when the locks and canal were constructed. 
It was indeed a viciously-running chute, suggesting to 
me the final pitch of the left-hand channel of Rock 
Island Rapids rather than Grand Rapids, to which it 
is often compared. I had heard that on rare occasions 
steamers had been run down here at high water ; at the 
present stage it looked to me that neither a large nor 
a small boat would have one chance in a hundred of 
avoiding disaster. 

The canal and locks avoided that first heavy fall of 
the Cascades completely, but the swift tumble of 
waters below was quite rough enough to make a pre- 
liminary survey well worth while. The steamer 
channel was on the Washington side, so that it was 
necessary for a boat to head directly across the cur- 
rent immediately on emerging from the lower lock 



378 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

chamber. The Oregon side of the river was thick with 
rocks right away round the bend, with not enough 
clear water to permit the passage of even a skiff. My 
course, therefore, would have to be the same as that 
of the steamer — just as sharply across to the opposite 
side as oars would take me. I had put iTnshallah 
through worse water than that a score of times, and, 
while it wasn't the sort of a place where one would 
want to break an oar or even catch a "crab," there was 
no reason to believe that we should have the least 
trouble in pulling across the hard-running swirls. 
Of course, if Imshallah really was stilPsmarting under 
the indignity of that oilbath. . . . But no — I honestly 
think there was nothing of distrust of my well-tried 
little skiff behind my sudden change of plans. Rather, 
I should say, it was due to the fact that a remark of the 
lock-master had brought me to a sudden realization 
that I now arrived at what I had always reckoned as 
my ultimate objective — tide-water. 

I had been planning to run on four miles farther to 
Bonneville that afternoon, in the hope of being able 
to pull through the forty miles of slackening water to 
Vancouver the following day. There I would get a 
tug to take the skiff up the Willamette to Portland, 
where I intended to leave her. As some of the finest 
scenery on the Columbia is passed in the twenty miles 
below the Cascades, this promised me another mem- 
orable day on the river — provided that there was only 
an occasional decent interval between showers. It 
was the lock-master's forecast of another rainy day, 
together with his assurance that the foot of the locks 
was generally rated as the head of tide-water, that 



THE HOME STRETCH 379 

prompted me to change my mind a few moments be- 
fore I was due to pull out again to the river, and book 
through to Portland on the Teal. 

With the idea of avoiding the wash of the steamer, 
I pulled down to the extreme lower end of the locks 
before she entered, taking advantage of the interval 
of waiting to trim carefully and look to my oars for 
the pull across the foot of the Cascades. I was intend- 
ing to let the Teal lock out ahead of me, and then pull 
as closely as possible in her wake, so as to have her 
below me to pick up the pieces in case anything went 
wrong. It was close to twilight now, with the sodden 
west darkening early under the blank grey cloud- 
mass of another storm blowing up-river from the sea. 
If that impetuous squall could have curbed its impa- 
tience and held off a couple of minutes longer, it 
might have had the satisfaction of treating me to a 
good soaking, if nothing more. As it was, I flung up 
my hands and kamerad-ed at the opening pelt of the 
big rain-drops. Speaking as one Columbia River 
skipper to another, I hailed the Captain of the J. N. 
Teal and asked him if he would take me and my boat 
aboard. 

"Where bound?" he bawled back. 
"Portland," I replied. 

"Aw right. Pull up sta'bo'd bow lively — 'fore gate 
open!" 

A dozen husky roustabouts, urged on by an impa- 
tient INIate, scrambled to catch the painter and give us 
a hand-up. I swung over the side all right, but Im- 
sliallah, hanging back a bit, came in for some pretty 
rough pulling and hauling before they got her on 



380 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

deck. The two of three of her planks that were 
started in the melee constituted about the worst in- 
jury the little lady received on the whole voyage. 

And so Imshallah and I came aboard the J. N. 
Teal to make the last leg of our voyage as passengers. 
The gates were turning back before I had reached 
the upper deck, and a few minutes later the power- 
fully-engined old stern-wheeler went floundering 
across the foam-streaked tail of the Cascades and off 
down the river. Castle Rock — nine hundred feet 
high and sheer-walled all around — was no more than 
a ghostly blur in the darkness as we sKpped by in the 
still rapidly moving current. JMultnom.ah's majesty 
was blanked behind the curtain of night and a driving 
rain, and only a distant roar on the port beam told 
where one of the lovehest of American waterfalls took 
its six-hundred-foot leap from the brink of the sou- 
thern wall of the river. Cape Horn and Rooster 
Rock were swathed to their foundations in streaming 
clouds. 

Once the Teal was out on the comparatively open 
waters of the lower river, the Captain came down for 
a yarn with me — as one Columbia skipper to another. 
He had spent most of his life on the Snake and lower 
Columbia, but he seemed to know the rapids and can- 
yons below the Canadian line almost reef by reef, and 
all of the old skippers I had met by reputation. He 
said that he had never heard of any one's ever having 
deliberately attempted to run the Cascades in any- 
thing smaller than a steamer, although an endless lot 
of craft had come to grief by getting in there by acci- 
dent. The only time a man ever went through in a 



THE HOME STRETCH 381 

small boat and came out alive was about ten years 
ago. That lucky navigator, after drinking most of 
a Saturday night in the town, came down to the river 
in the dim grey dawn of a Sunday, got into his boat 
and pushed off. It was along toward church-time 
that a ferry-man, thirty miles or more down river, 
picked up a half filled skiff. Quietly sleeping in the 
stern-sheets, with nothing but his nose above water, 
was the only man that ever came through the Cas- 
cades in a small boat. 

The Captain looked at me with a queer smile after 
he told that story. "I don't suppose you were heeled 
to tackle the Cascades just like that?" he asked finally. 

And so, for the last time, I was taken for a boot- 
legger. But no — not quite the last. I believe it was 
the porter at Hotel Portland who asked me if — ahem ! 
— if I had got away with anything from Canada. 
And for all of that incessant trail of smoke, no fire — 
or practically none. 

The day of my arrival in Portland I delivered Im- 
shallaJi up to the kindest-faced boat-house proprietor 
on the Willamette and told him to take his time about 
finding her a home with some sport-loving Oregonian 
who knew how to treat a lady right and wouldn't 
give her any kind of menial work to do. I told him I 
didn't want to have her work for a living under any 
conditions, as I felt she had earned a rest; and to im- 
press upon whoever bought her that she was high- 
spirited and not to be taken liberties with, such as 
subjecting her to garbage shower-baths and similar 
indignities. He asked me if she had a name, and I 
told him that she hadn't — any more; that the one she 



382 DOWN THE COLUMBIA 

had been carrying had ceased to be in point now her 
voyage was over. It had been a very appropriate 
name for a boat on the Columbia, though, I assured 
him, and I was going to keep it to use if I ever made 
the voyage again. 

Portland, although it is not directly upon the Co- 
lumbia, has always made that river distinctively its 
own. I had reahzed that in a vague way for many 
years, but it came home to me again with renewed 
force now that I had arrived in Portland after having 
had some glimpse of every town and village from the 
Selkirks to the sea. (Astoria and tHe lower river I 
had known from many steamer voyages in the past.) 
Of all the thousands living on or near the Colum- 
bia, those of Portland still struck me as being the 
ones who held this most strikingly individual of all the 
world's rivers at most nearly its true value. With 
Portlanders, I should perhaps include all of those 
living on the river from Astoria to The Dalles. These, 
too, take a mighty pride in their great river, and re- 
gard it with little of that distrustful reproach one re- 
marks so often on the upper Columbia, where the 
settlers see it bearing past their parched fields the 
water and the power that would mean the difference 
to them between success and disaster. When this 
stigma has been wiped out by reclamation (as it soon 
will be), without a doubt the plucky pioneers of the 
upper Columbia will see in their river many beauties 
that escape their troubled eyes to-day. 

The earlj^ Romans made some attempt to give ex- 
pression to their love of the Tiber in monuments and 
bridges. It would be hard indeed to conceive of any- 



I 



THE HOME STRETCH 383 

thing in marble or bronze, or yet in soaring spans of 
steel, that would give adequate expression to the pride 
of the people of the lower Columbia in their river; and 
so it is a matter of felicitation that they have sought to 
pay their tribute in another way. There was inspira- 
tion behind the conception of the idea of the Columbia 
Highway, just as there was genius and rare imagina- 
tion in the carrying out of that idea. I have said 
that the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia is a scenic 
wonder apart from all others; that it stands without 
a rival of its kind. Perhaps the greatest compliment 
that I can pay to the Columbia Highway is to say 
that it is worthy of the river by which it runs. 



(the end) 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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